Alfredo Pacheco, a soccer player who played for the Salvadoran national side before being banned from the sport for life for his involvement in match fixing, was murdered on Sunday (December 28).
Thirty-three-year-old Pacheco was with a group of friends chatting in a gas station when an unknown assailant shot at the group various times, authorities said. Two other people were injured and were taken to a nearby hospital in the city of Santa Ana, west of the capital San Salvador.
Friends and relatives of the former defender packed a funeral home in Santa Ana on Monday (December 28) to say their last goodbye to Pacheco.
The player’s cousin, Claudia Pacheco, said Pacheco was planning on taking his family to live in the United States over security concerns in El Salvador. The scandal had soured him, she said.
“His last dream was to take his wife and children to the United States, seeing the lack of security we have here, because that was one of his dreams, after soccer came his family. They killed his first dream (referring to the time he was banned for match-fixing) and he said: ‘look, I’m taking my family there’. That was his dream, but unfortunately he wasn’t able to fulfil it.” she said.
Pacheco’s wife, Gloria Elizabeth Pacheco, asked the defender’s fans to respect the family’s mourning, but thanked them for their support.
“He was a good person, he was a great friend, a great husband, a great father. What can I say? I have no words to describe what we are feeling right now. I ask his fans and all the people who appreciate my husband to respect our pain, but I want to thank all of those who have expressed their support to me, to my children, to my husband’s family,” she said.
Pacheco was a defender who played for the Salvadoran clubs Club Deportivo FAS and Asociacion Deportiva Isidro Metapan. He also played for the New York Red Bulls in the United States.
Pacheco was the player with the most caps for the Salvadoran national team. He was banned from the sport by the Salvadoran soccer federation in 2013 when it was found he had been involved in match fixing.
El Salvador has seen its murder rate skyrocket this year, with homicides up 55 percent compared with last year. So far this year, there have been 6,068 murders, according to police data. (Reuters)
