Former US baseball player Jenrry Mejia has opened up about his close shave with death after the hotel he was staying in Venezuela collapsed in the earthquake that tore through the country on Wednesday. Jenrry Mejia, who played for the New York Mets baseball team, had a miraculous escape after he landed on the ground floor of the hotel instead of the sixth floor, where he was staying.
The baseball player is from the Dominican Republic and was staying in Venezuela’s La Guaira, the worst-hit region, when disaster struck. He currently plays for La Guaira Delfines of the Venezuelan Major League.
Mejia told a Spanish media outlet that he was done with his gym session and was returning to his room when the elevator took him to the ground floor instead of the sixth floor because someone else had requested it. “I was in the gym area. And at that moment, I took the elevator to leave,” Mejia said. “In fact, I had pressed number six, which was where my floor was. But … I think it was God because instead of going up, it went down to the basement.”
He thinks it was a “divine intervention” that brought him to the bottom floor and out of the hotel, 40 seconds before it crumbled. “The door opened directly into the lobby. That’s when I came out, and the building started to collapse,” he said.
Meijia revealed he lost all his possessions, including his passport and couldn’t fly home to the Dominican Republic because all flights had been suspended.
He believes he and an elderly man, whom he helped flee the hotel, were the only two who survived the disaster.
“With the agility I have, I helped an elderly gentleman. I was able to drag him away, take him with me,” he told the station. “I think only he and I (came out alive), the others are still there, trapped under the rubble.
