Soccer star’s wife and 2 children killed in Venezuela earthquakes, team says

The wife and two children of Argentine soccer star 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, CNN 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.

“Peace to their souls and comfort for Lucas and all his loved ones,” the team wrote in a post on X.

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

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

More than 1,700 people have died and tens of thousands are still unaccounted for, Venezuelan authorities said Monday.

Race to find survivors

Over the weekend, a mother and her 9-month-old baby were pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building in Venezuela by a U.S. search and rescue team. 

Virginia Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1 shared a video of its members pulling a woman from the rubble of a collapsed building. Neighbors cheered as she was pulled from the wreckage. 

Another video, shared by the U.S. State Department, showed the baby being removed from the rubble wrapped in blue fabric. The baby’s face was blurred, but it could be heard crying. 

Venezuelans have reported seeing few state rescue teams in the hardest-hit areas, though acting President Delcy Rodríguez said the Venezuelan government was mounting a full response. The government of Caracas said Saturday that about 200 people had been rescued. But online databases say about 51,000 remain missing.

In La Guaira, a woman named Diana Sandrano told CBS News that she will search for her missing brother “as long as it takes.” 

“He deserves to live and have a future,” Sandrano said, after a day of searching.