A drug lord, a car chase and more: New details make Ortiz shooting more complicated
Like any Santo Domingo hotspot in the gritty eastern section of the Dominican Republic capital, the Dial Bar & Lounge was packed last Sunday night, its patrons engaged in lively banter, sipping cocktails and looking at their cell phones. One of the most famous former Major League Baseball stars and a three-time World Series champ, David Ortiz, was among them, seated front and center alongside a friend.
Then a thin, baseball cap-wearing male hopped off the back of a motor scooter, walked up to the 43-year-old Ortiz, known as Big Papi by legions of fans, and fired a single bullet into Ortiz’s back, sending the ex-slugger to the floor. Initial reports described the incident as a robbery, which video quickly disputed. Once the shock of the brazen attack gave way, a troubling question took its place: Why?
Answers may lie in the cracks that are developing in Ortiz’s carefully crafted persona.
On one hand, there is the Boston baseball icon who has hosted his own charitable golf event in the D.R. each year, drawing sports world VIPs and raising millions for Dominican and New England disadvantaged children with pediatric heart care needs.
On the other hand, there are shady links to the slugger going as far back as his early Red Sox days. Behind his megawatt smile and baseball fame across two countries lie complicated issues and confounding lifestyle choices that include ties to an accused gambler, an alleged affair and an unreported car chase and subsequent coverup of the crash. Interviews with Dominican and American sources familiar with the case suggest the shooting was not simply a matter of Ortiz being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his life may have been in danger even if he’d been in the U.S.
Six days after Ortiz was shot, he remains in a Boston hospital, while Dominican authorities have implicated no fewer than 12 people in connection with the attack, including the alleged gunman, 25-year-old Rolfi Ferreira-Cruz, and two jailed suspects who are accused of somehow masterminding the hit from the prison cells where they are currently serving time. A Dominican source was incredulous that such a sophisticated operation could be orchestrated from prison, in a country where the poverty level is crippling.
“They coordinated this from jail?” says the Dominican source, who has knowledge of the Ortiz case. The source asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal against himself or others. “These guys haven’t seen $5,000 in their lives. There might be three levels of what’s going on here: No.1, funding and planning; No. 2, execution (of the plan); and No. 3, guys being blamed. They probably have one cell phone between them. One is 24 years old. He’s been in prison for five years.”
Dominican police: The price on ‘Big Papi’s’ head was set at just $7,800 as six suspects are now detained in the weekend shooting
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