Argentine footballer Lucas Trejo has been left devastated after his wife and two children were confirmed dead following the powerful twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela earlier this week.
Trejo, who plays for Club Sport Marítimo La Guaira in Venezuela’s second division, had spent three days searching through the rubble for his missing family before rescue workers recovered the bodies of his wife, Yanina, and their children, Aaron and Ainhoa.
The club announced the tragic news in an emotional statement shared on Instagram on Sunday.
“Club Sport Marítimo La Guaira deeply mourns the irreparable loss of our player’s wife and children,” the club wrote alongside a family photograph, expressing its condolences to the 38-year-old footballer.
According to reports, Trejo was attending his club’s training camp in Caracas when the twin earthquakes, measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, struck on Wednesday evening. Upon learning of the disaster, he rushed back to his home in La Guaira, the region hardest hit by the catastrophe.
His brother-in-law, Ricardo Ardiles, described the heartbreaking scene awaiting Trejo.
“He found absolutely nothing of what the building itself had been,” Ardiles told CNN, highlighting the scale of destruction caused by the powerful tremors.
The earthquakes have triggered one of Venezuela’s deadliest natural disasters in recent years. Authorities said on Sunday that nearly 1,500 people have been confirmed dead, while tens of thousands remain unaccounted for as rescue teams continue searching collapsed buildings and devastated communities.
Emergency responders are racing against time to locate survivors, although hopes continue to fade as the death toll rises and humanitarian needs intensify across the affected regions.
