That destroyed him. He was devastated.”
Santiago attempted to comfort the player by explaining that Milan's long-term scouting would not be derailed by a single match.
“I told him: ‘Forget about that. Milan have been watching you for a year or two now.
They don’t sign you based on one or two games’. And Andrés said to me: ‘They’re not going to sign me anymore’.”
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Prior to the fatal altercation, the national squad faced extreme pressure, including televised death threats against midfielder Gabriel Gómez and head coach Francisco Maturana inside their hotel rooms.
“Before and after the game against the United States, Andrés didn’t say anything to me about those things,” said Santiago.
Santiago strongly advised his brother against an immediate return to Colombia to avoid public scrutiny and potential backlash.
“I told Andrés, ‘Don’t go back to Colombia’,” said Santiago. “Stay here with all of us and have Pamela meet you here.
And he told me, ‘No, I have to go to Colombia to face things head-on and tell Pamela that we should travel together’.
He never imagined they were going to do something like that to him.”
The family received the news of the murder via a phone call at 2 a. m.
in Las Vegas from national teammate Gabriel Gómez. “He told us: ‘They killed Andrés’,” said Santiago.
“As you can imagine, it was chaos.”
The family immediately boarded flights from Las Vegas to Medellín amid widespread misinformation regarding the crime. “Those images in Las Vegas have never left me,” said Santiago.
