TRAGEDY struck during a table tennis match as a popular nursing assistant died when he collapsed immediately after completing his game.

Prudhoe’s Raymond Lazareto (48) suffered a heart attack while representing Newton’s C team during a game versus Whickham. Paramedics attended the scene but he was later pronounced dead.

On Tuesday, hundreds of people attended the funeral of the kind-hearted nursing assistant, who worked at Hexham General Hospital, to pay their respects.

Raymond’s wife Dulce (48), who also works at the hospital as a nurse, said: “Everyone who knew him called him a ‘gentle giant’. He always had a smile on his face and a very positive outlook on life.

“He would do anything for anyone. If he had a penny in his pocket and somebody else needed it, he would give it to them.”

Raymond and Dulce met during their teenage years in their native Philippines, and they moved to the UK together in 2003.

They worked together at Red Brick House care home in Prudhoe, before Dulce got a job at Hexham hospital. Soon after, Raymond got a job at the hospital in domestic housekeeping before becoming a nursing assistant.

Dulce said: “People laughed because he would say I was the boss at home and also the boss at work.

“He was a family man and he would do anything for me and our son, Yrvin. I didn’t realise how much he talked about us until the funeral when people kept telling us that we had no idea how proud he was of us and how much he loved us.

“The support we have had from people has been a big comfort to us. My son and I will never leave Prudhoe.

“We have been made to feel like this is our home.”

As a keen basketball player and table tennis player in the Philippines, Raymond focused his attention on the latter as basketball wasn’t readily accessible in the North-East.

The family would play at sessions at Riding Mill before he joined Newton Table Tennis Club to play competitive matches.

He was a popular member of the club’s C team, which has since resigned from the Northumbria Table Tennis League following the fateful incident at Whickham.

Teammate David Neal said: “Raymond was a good friend and a wonderful table tennis player in our division, and we are all absolutely saddened. He will be a big miss.”