Argentine footballer loses wife, two children in Venezuela earthquake

The wife and two children of Argentine footballer Lucas Trejo have died after powerful twin earthquakes struck Venezuela, his team said on Sunday.

Trejo, who plays for Club Sport Maritimo La Guaira, a second-division team in Venezuela, had searched for his wife Yanina and children Aaron and Ainhoa in the rubble for three days before rescue workers recovered their bodies, US media reported.

“Club Sport Maritimo La Guaira deeply mourns the irreparable loss of our player’s wife and children,” the team said in a post on Instagram, accompanied by a photo of the family.

Trejo, 38, was at a team training camp in Caracas when the quakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck on Wednesday evening, according to CNN.

He immediately returned to his home in La Guaira — the state worst hit by the disaster — to “a horrific scene,” Trejo’s brother-in-law Ricardo Ardiles told CNN.

“He found absolutely nothing of what the building itself had been,” Ardiles said.

Nearly 1,500 people have died and tens of thousands are still unaccounted for, Venezuelan authorities said on Sunday.

On Sunday, Club Sport Marítimo La Guaira said it “deeply mourns the irreparable loss” of Trejo’s family in a social media post, sharing a photo of the four together –– Trejo with one hand resting on his daughter’s shoulder and the other around his wife.

“Lucas, you are not alone. Your family at Maritime La Guaira is with you,” it said.

The disaster last week, which the US Geological Survey said was a rare “doublet,” with two major earthquakes striking just 39 seconds apart, has also killed and impacted several soccer players in the country.

Yimvert Berroteran, a promising young talent, was among the hundreds of people who died, the Venezuelan national team and the Venezuelan Football Federation (FVF) said Friday.

The 18-year-old played at the U-17 World Cup in Doha a few months ago and recently for the U-20 national team.

The quake also claimed the lives of young players Víctor Palacios and Razan Sijaa, according to FVF and their respective clubs.

The partner of another player, Héctor Bello, died while protecting their toddler, Bello said Saturday on social media.

“I’ll make sure to remind our baby girl how wonderful you were and how much you loved her,” Bello wrote in a post.

Tourists and foreign residents are also among the dead, including eight Chinese nationals, Chinese state media said Sunday.

AFP