The wife and family of an Argentine soccer player competing with a Venezuelan team were among the people killed during last week’s powerful earthquakes in the South American country, team officials said.
Lucas Trejo, who plays for Club Sport Marítimo La Guaira, was helping officials comb through rubble in Venezuela, hoping to find his wife, Yanina, and their children, Aarón and Ainhoa, KABC reported.
Trejo’s brother-in-law, Ricardo Ardiles, told CNN Español on Friday that the soccer player was “emotionally overwhelmed” and that “absolutely nothing” was left of the family’s beachfront home in La Guaira.
Noticias Telemundo confirmed the deaths with Trejo’s soccer club, which mourned the loss in a social media post, according to NBC News.
“For the eternal rest of Yanina de Trejo (wife), Aarón Trejo (son) and Ainhoa Trejo (daughter) of our player Lucas Trejo,” the team wrote on Instagram. “The great family of Club Sport Marítimo de La Guaira offers their words of condolence for the death of his family members.”
Trejo, 38, was at a team training camp in Caracas when the two earthquakes struck, CNN Español reported. He immediately rushed to his home in La Guaira, 18 miles north of the capital.
Another player for Marítimo de La Guaira, defender Hector Bello, announced in an Instagram post that his wife, Andrea Bello, was killed as she used her body to shield their daughter, Alana, as their building collapsed, WNBC reported. Alana Bello survived as she was pulled from the rubble, according to the television station.
“You’ll always be our favorite heroine, Mommy,” Bello wrote in Spanish in a social media post paying tribute to his late wife. “I’ll make sure to remind our baby girl how wonderful you were and how much you loved her.”
“I’ll tell her the story of how you saved her, my love -- how you gave your own life for our daughter, how you were a brave woman who, even as you breathed your last breaths, never abandoned her.”
Other soccer players who died in the earthquake included Yimvert Berroteran, 18, who played at the U-17 World Cup a few months ago and recently for the U-20 national team, CNN reported.
Also killed were Víctor Palacios and Razan Sijaa, according to the Venezuelan Football Federation.