At least 124 people have d!ed after a roof collapsed at a nightclub in the Dominican Republic, including a singer and two professional baseball players.
Renowned Dominican merengue singer Rubby Perez, 69, was on stage at the popular Jet Set nightclub when the roof collapsed shortly after midnight on Tuesday, April 8.
His manager has confirmed that he was among those killed, noting that Perez’s team is ‘waiting for the children to reach an agreement for the funeral’.
Retired Major League Baseball pitcher Octavio Dotel, who won a World Series in 2011 with the St Louis Cardinals, was also killed. Dotel, 51, was rescued alive but died of his injuries while being taken to hospital.
Tony Blanco, who used to play for the Washington Nationals, was killed when he tried to save his friend and former baseball player Esteban German from being hit by falling debris. Blanco, 43, died but German, 47, miraculously survived.
There were between 500 and 1,000 people in the club when disaster struck at around 12.44am Tuesday, local media reports.
The club has a capacity for 700 people seated and about 1,000 people standing.
Rescuers raced to find survivors early on Wednesday and continued to press on with the search effort, which more than 24 hours after the roof caved in began to be limited more to recovering bodies.
Perez was on stage when there was a blackout and the roof came crashing down, according to eyewitness reports.
The singer’s daughter Zulinka told reporters she had managed to escape after the roof collapsed, but he did not.
Also among the dead was the governor of the Monte Cristi municipality, Nelsy Cruz, according to President Luis Abinader.
The president visited the scene and declared three days of national mourning.
The death toll started at 15 and kept rising throughout Tuesday. By early Wednesday, the preliminary toll had reached 98, said Juan Manuel Mendez, director of the Emergency Operations Center.
‘As long as there is hope for life, all authorities will be working to recover or rescue these people,’ he said earlier.
Rescuers this afternoon increased the death toll to 124, with the number expected to increase further.
Dotel’s brother Angel told El Nuevo Diario newspaper that he died before being pulled from underneath the debris.
The ex-MLB player had been heard screaming for help by first responders, according to Dominican television station Supercanal.
