José Juan was 16 years old and had a clear plan: to play professional baseball in the Major Leagues.
That is why he had left Florida, where he lived with his parents, to train in Cali with the Salas Baseball Academy. His grandparents, Juan de Dios and Yelitza, traveled from Barinas, Venezuela, to accompany him in that process. The three were trapped in the Vanessa building when the magnitude 7,4 earthquake shook Colombia on August 10.
For more than 72 hours, firefighters and a team of miners opened tunnels through the rubble while the family waited for news from Venezuela and the United States. This Saturday, the confirmation they feared arrived: all three had died. “The boy was quite talented”, said his uncle Daniel Valbuena. Indervalle and Colombia’s Ministry of Sport sent condolences to a family that now, instead of celebrating a baseball debut, is organizing three funerals.