Argentine footballer Lucas Trejo has been thrown into mourning after his wife and two children were confirmed dead following the devastating twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela earlier this week.
Trejo’s club, Club Sport Marítimo La Guaira, announced the heartbreaking news on Sunday, expressing sympathy over the loss suffered by the 38-year-old defender.
According to the club, Trejo’s wife, Yanina, and their two children, Aaron and Ainhoa, were among the victims of the powerful earthquakes that devastated parts of La Guaira State.
“Club Sport Marítimo La Guaira deeply mourns the irreparable loss of our player’s wife and children,” the club wrote in a statement posted on Instagram alongside a family photograph.
Reports by US media indicated that Trejo spent three days desperately searching through the rubble after the earthquakes before rescue workers eventually recovered the bodies of his loved ones.
The footballer, who currently plays for the Venezuelan second-division side, was reportedly attending a team training camp in Caracas when the twin earthquakes, measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, struck on Wednesday evening.
Following the disaster, Trejo immediately travelled to his hometown in La Guaira, one of the areas worst affected by the earthquakes.
His brother-in-law, Ricardo Ardiles, told CNN that the footballer returned to a scene of complete devastation.
“He found absolutely nothing of what the building itself had been,” Ardiles said, describing the destruction left behind by the disaster.
The twin earthquakes have caused widespread destruction across Venezuela, flattening buildings and trapping thousands beneath collapsed structures.
Authorities said the death toll has continued to rise as search and rescue efforts progress across the affected regions.
According to the latest official figures released on Sunday, nearly 1,500 people have lost their lives, while tens of thousands of others remain missing.
Emergency workers, assisted by international rescue teams, continue searching through the debris in hopes of finding survivors, although hopes are fading as more bodies are recovered from collapsed buildings.
The tragedy involving Trejo’s family has become one of the many personal stories highlighting the enormous human cost of Venezuela’s deadliest natural disaster in decades.
