What started out as an ordinary soccer game over the weekend in Utah will forever change the Porillo family.
During a game in Murray, Utah, youth soccer ref Riccardo Portillo — a 46-year-old father of three girls — was punched by a 17-year-old player after he issued a yellow card. The punch to the side of Portillo’s head was so severe that he fell into a coma and remains in “extremely critical condition,” according to KSN.com.
The 17-year-old player has reportedly been booked into a juvenile detention center for “investigation of aggravated assault,” according to Police Lt. Justin Hoyal. Dr. Shawn Smith, alongside Portillo’a family, told reporters at the Intermountain Medical Center, that the punch caused “bleeding around the blood vessels in one area of the brain, and blood loss and edema in another.”
More details are included in the video below.
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