The collapse of the roof at Jet Set, one of Santo Domingo’s most popular nightclubs, killed many prominent Dominicans, including baseball players and politicians.
Kelvin Espinal spent three days this week at the Santo Domingo morgue.
His cousin, Yadhira Elaine Estévez Serrano, was among 221 people who died when the roof collapsed early Tuesday at the Jet Set nightclub in the capital of the Dominican Republic. His cousin, who was more like a sister, died the day before her 42nd birthday.
And like dozens of other families, Mr. Espinal had yet to receive his loved one’s body for burial.
“We spent all day Tuesday here, until 12 at night,” Mr. Espinal said Thursday afternoon. “We were here all day Wednesday and today.”
The authorities in the Dominican Republic on Thursday ended the search for bodies trapped in the Jet Set nightclub, where a roof collapsed during a concert, killing 221 people and injuring 189 more.
The Emergency Operations Center handed the site over to the prosecutor’s office to pick up the investigation. Now comes the hard part: figuring out what caused the roof of a 50-year-old former movie theater to come crashing down, just as hundreds of people had gathered for a concert.
The roof caved in early Tuesday at Jet Set, a well-known disco in Santo Domingo, whose Monday live music nights were a decades-old tradition popular with politicians, athletes and the business class. A governor died, as did two former Major League Baseball players and a family of prominent bankers.
The body of the merengue singer who was performing, Rubby Pérez, was pulled out of the wreckage Wednesday morning. So many of his fans from his hometown, Haina, a city just outside the capital, were at his concert that a collective wake was held at a local recreation center.
