10 Photos of Gorkys Hernández's Wife, Deisy Tovar de Hernández, Who Died in Venezuela's Deadly Double Earthquakes

The wife of former Major League Baseball outfielder Gorkys Hernández has been confirmed dead in the Venezuela earthquakes that struck near Macuto and La Guaira this week, the player announced on Saturday. The 36-year-old, named locally as Deisy Tovar de Hernández, was among those caught in the collapse of the Hotel Eduards as two powerful tremors shook the Caribbean coast.

For context, Venezuela was hit by back-to-back earthquakes, measured at magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, while the La Guaira Delfines baseball team were preparing to face the Aragua Tigres at the Estadio Forum de La Guaira, a beachfront stadium in Macuto. Several relatives of Delfines players, including Deisy, were staying at the nearby Hotel Eduards when the building partially crumbled, trapping guests under concrete and twisted metal.

Gorkys Hernández Mourns Wife Deisy After Venezuela Earthquakes

Hernández, who played in MLB from 2012 to 2019 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, San Francisco Giants and Boston Red Sox, confirmed his wife's death in an emotional Instagram post that quickly spread among Venezuelan fans and the wider baseball community.

'You are and always will be the queen of my life, the most beautiful, lovely, and precious woman in the world,' he wrote, paying tribute to Deisy in Spanish. 'You were the one who always found a way to lift me up during hard times, you were and remain the most beautiful woman of my life. You will always be with me, at every hour and in every moment.'

In the same message, Hernández asked her to guide him through the grief and the chaos left by the earthquakes. 'Fly high, my princess, my queen, may God hold you in His glory. Guide me to keep moving forward and to lift up our family,' he wrote. 'Love you, rest in peace, my girl. Give me strength, love of my life, because we had a mission, and I am here to fulfill it. You taught me to be strong through life's challenges, which is never easy, but that is how you want me to be, and that is how it will be. My warrior, Deisy Maria Tovar De Hernandez.'

The couple married in December 2025, a relatively recent start to a life together that has been brutally cut short. Deisy leaves behind a young daughter, Vittoria Vásquez, from a previous relationship, adding another layer of heartbreak to an already devastating week for the family.

Hotel Eduards Tragedy amid the Venezuela Earthquakes

The news came after the Delfines' league fixture against the Aragua Tigres was suspended when the double earthquakes hit. As fans and players scrambled out of the Estadio Forum de La Guaira, attention quickly shifted to the nearby Hotel Eduards, where several players' relatives were staying.

According to local reports, Hernández and his teammates ran from the stadium to the hotel in a frantic attempt to locate their families. By the time they arrived, large parts of the structure had collapsed. Drone images of Macuto and La Guaira have already shown entire sections of the coastal strip reduced to rubble, and Hotel Eduards became one of the starkest symbols of that destruction.

Photographs from the scene captured the raw panic and disbelief. One image showed former Los Angeles Angels prospect Luis Viloria standing in front of the tangled wreckage, staring silently at the ruins. Another showed Hernández sitting on the pavement outside the hotel fence, hunched over, eyes fixed on his mobile phone as he waited for updates that never seemed to be good enough.

On Friday night, Deisy's daughter Vittoria used Instagram Stories to share what rescuers and relatives were still hearing from under the debris. 'As of 4:00 p.m. today, screams can still be heard from the Hotel Eduard,' the message read. 'There are people still alive inside. Help is needed to move the rubble, heavy machinery is required.'

Her plea underlined the desperate pace and limited resources of the search effort. If people were still crying out almost a day after the quakes, then time and equipment were not on their side. It is the sort of detail that moves a disaster from the abstract into something far more brutal and specific.

Baseball Community Reels as Search Efforts Continue

T he Delfines organisation has found itself at the centre of a national tragedy. Players and coaches are simultaneously public figures and private victims, their grief unfolding in real time on social media and in front of cameras outside ruined buildings.

Local sports broadcaster Raúl Zambrano wrote on X on Saturday that rescue teams were still working to find the wife and daughter of former major league player and current Delfines coach, Eliézer Alfonzo. Their names had not been officially released at the time of his post. Zambrano's update underscored that Hernández's loss, awful as it is, is only one part of a larger disaster enveloping Venezuelan baseball families.

Officials have not yet provided a complete accounting of the dead and missing from the hotel. What is clear is that the building has become a grim focal point for relatives who refuse to leave while there is any chance of survivors.

In case you missed it, early estimates from Venezuelan authorities and regional officials have placed the country's total earthquake death toll in the hundreds, with rescue work hampered by damaged roads, power cuts and limited heavy machinery. Those constraints are exactly what Vittoria was flagging when she spoke about the need to move rubble at Hotel Eduards.

The baseball community, used to obsessing over stats and standings, has instead been circulating phone numbers for blood banks, volunteering lists and donation drives.

Tributes to Deisy and other victims have appeared alongside game highlights, a jarring juxtaposition that captures how fast normal life can tear in two. Some of the posts are simple, almost painfully so, just photos of smiling families in stadium seats before everything went to s**t.

For Hernández, whose career has taken him from Venezuelan diamonds to MLB stadiums and back, the earthquakes have transformed him from athlete to widower overnight. His Instagram tribute is not a polished statement drafted by a club press officer, it reads like a man typing through shock. That is what makes it so hard to look away.