Girl, 17, whose dad is lost in nightclub rubble spends birthday at scene

Shailyn Peña is one of many whose loved ones are missing after the roof of a nightclub collapsed in Santo Domingo.

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This week, excited to see a concert by the popular Dominican singer Rubby Pérez, he took his wife and his sister. Now all three are buried beneath the rubble of the collapsed discotheque, after the roof caved in part way through the performance, leaving at least 218 dead.

"I haven't heard any news about any of them," said Shailyn Peña, Máximo's 17-year-old daughter as she sat on a wall outside the devastated venue.

"It was just another Monday night for them. In fact, my dad invited my mum to come too but at the last minute she decided not to go. It was a blessing in disguise."

Behind her as she spoke to me on Wednesday afternoon, a team of rescue workers was meticulously going through the rubble inside the building, listening for the slightest sound of a survivor beneath them.