“But can you tell me if my dad’s O.K.?”

Mr. Ponce was noncommittal, promising only that his team would continue to look for the boy’s father.

Wilhem’s question was answered Saturday afternoon.

Hundreds of residents had gathered over the course of the morning to watch the rescue operation, though Mr. Jiménez’s two youngest sons, including Wilhem, had stayed home with their mother after spending Friday at the search site.

Suddenly, the missing officer’s relatives received word that Mr. Jiménez had been found. A group of them rushed forward but were stopped by police officers.

Mr. Jiménez was dead. The town’s death toll had climbed to 37, and the national death toll to 62.

As rescuers pulled Mr. Jiménez’s body from the rubble, three of his relatives collapsed to the ground, sobbing in anguish, and his eldest son, Victor Manuel, 14, rushed the police cordon but was restrained.

The rescuers wrapped the body in a cloth, slid it into the back of a police truck and drove it to the coroner’s office.

The relatives remained for a few minutes, hugging one another, as residents — many of them crying, too – surrounded them. Then they started walking toward the Jiménez house, to break the news to the officer’s wife and two youngest sons.