Punched Ref Dies: Richard Portillo Had Been Attacked Before, Says Daughter

Richard Portillo, a 46-year-old referee for a recreational soccer league in Salt Lake City, died this weekend after a 17-year-old player punched him in the side of the head. Portillo had given a yellow card to the player in a game last Saturday, and died after hanging in a coma for seven days. The Daily Mail reported before Portillo passed away that the teenager who hit him was booked into juvenile detention on suspicion of aggravated assault, though authorities expect to bring up more serious charges against the youth now that Portillo has died from his injuries.

The Guardian wrote that according to a police report, Portillo had issued a yellow card to the teenager during a game at Eisenhower Junior High School in Taylorsville. The teenager argued with Portillo about the call, which was given for pushing an opposing player, and punched Portillo in the face. His daughter, Johana Portillo, said that while she had not been at the game, friends told her that her father had seemed fine at first, then later complained of dizziness and asked to be held up. When he sat down, he began vomiting blood. An ambulance was called; when police arrived, the teenager was gone and Portillo was lying on the ground in the fetal position. He told emergency response workers that his face and back hurt and that he was nauseous, and after arriving to Intermountain Medical Center, he fell into a coma from which he did not emerge.

"He loved soccer," his daughter Johana Portillo told CNN on Friday. "We just never thought this was going to happen. He loved what he did and it was his passion."

Sports Illustrated reports that the attack was not the first that Richard Portillo had suffered in his eight years working as referee, which was his second job. Five years ago, another player who disagreed with a call broke Portillo's ribs, and a few years before that, a player broke his leg. The magazine reports that other referees in the Salt Lake City youth league had been injured on the job as well.

Portillo and his family had planned to go on vacation on Thursday. Instead, Johana Portillo said, she and her family are directing that money toward expenses for her father's death. Richard Portillo's sisters were reportedly trying to come from Guadalajara, Mexico to see him for the first time in 16 years, when he first moved to Utah.