13-year-old El Dorado Hills soccer player dies weeks after being hit by car, family says

An El Dorado Hills teen died earlier this week at a hospital after being hit by a car last month while out on a jog, family members and her Sacramento-area club soccer team said this week.

Sophia Torres, 13, was struck on Serrano Parkway in El Dorado Hills the afternoon of July 12, her family said in a statement accompanying a GoFundMe page set up July 17 for medical expenses.

“It was no one’s fault,” the Torres family wrote of the accident.

Sophia was rushed to a hospital, where doctors identified a subarachnoid hemorrhage before performing brain and abdominal surgery, family wrote.

Sophia played for San Juan Soccer Club, a Rancho Cordova-based youth soccer club, which announced her passing in a social media post Monday evening.

“Today our beautiful Sophia was called home to be amongst the stars,” San Juan Soccer Club wrote. “A destination where she was always intended to be. A smile that could light up a room. A sense of humor capable of creating an on-demand ab workout.

“A competitor on and off the field, especially when it mattered most. Sophia’s soul is beautiful, her light brilliant.”

Sophia, an incoming high school freshman, would have turned 14 next Thursday.

She is survived by her parents, Melanie and Omir Torres, her older sister Samantha and her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, according to an obituary published Thursday by The Sacramento Bee.

Two memorial services are planned for Sophia, both in El Dorado Hills: one at 3 p.m. Friday at Holy Trinity Parish, and a celebration of life at 1 p.m. Saturday at District Church. Friday’s service will include a candlelight vigil and will be livestreamed online, family said in the obituary.

San Juan Soccer Club is selling T-shirts that show Sophia’s initials and her uniform number, 19, inside a heart. The club said all proceeds will be donated to the Torres family.

The GoFundMe page was set up by Thrive with 10-35, a volunteer nonprofit organization established by the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office, on behalf of Melanie Torres and her family.

The crowdfunding campaign as of Friday morning had raised close to $93,000 for the Torres family.