Authorities in the Dominican Republic have arrested a man they believe is the mastermind behind the shooting of former Boston Red Sox legend David Ortiz.
Police have detained Victor Hugo Gomez, who, they allege, actually orchestrated a hit on his cousin, Sixto David Fernandez, who is also a friend of Ortiz. Fernandez was with Ortiz the night of the shooting, and the two men look alike. Authorities believe the hitmen mistook Ortiz for Fernandez, The Associated Press reported.
Gomez posted a video on YouTube professing his innocence, claiming he would not try to kill his cousin.
“I would never do something like this,” Gomez said in the seven-minute video posted Friday.
He said he now feared for his life and has asked police in the country to investigate further, the AP reported.
“I want to clarify that I have nothing to do with any attempt on the life against Sixto David Fernandez,” he said. “We’re family.”
The AP reported that Gomez then spent much of the remainder of the video “accusing Fernandez of having ties to drug traffickers, saying that many people would back up his claims.”
Gomez’s alleged motive for wanting his cousin dead is that Fernandez allegedly ratted him out to Dominican authorities in 2011 for drug crimes. Gomez served jail time for his crimes, where he allegedly met one of the nearly dozen suspects arrested for the Ortiz shooting.
Fernandez was reportedly not injured during the shooting, which sent Ortiz to the emergency room. The Daily Wire previously reported that Ortiz’s assistant, Leo Lopez, said the former baseball star was “bleeding from his liver” and needed to have “portions of his intestines, colon and his gallbladder” removed to stop the internal bleeding. Ortiz was eventually moved to a hospital closer to his home, in Boston, where he has since been moved out of the intensive care unit.
Gomez, according to Dominican police, allegedly sent threatening messages to his cousin Fernandez before the shooting, though the exact timing of these messages is unknown.
After his stint in prison in 2011, Gomez was one of dozens accused of drug trafficking in March 2019 after a sting in Houston, the AP reported. In his YouTube video, Gomez said he couldn’t afford a lawyer or bond, which is why he didn’t turn himself in to U.S. authorities for the drug trafficking allegations. He also said he wasn’t home at the time he was being sought by authorities.
The AP also reported that another suspect has been arrested in connection with the shooting of Ortiz: Alberto Rodriguez Mota. Mota allegedly paid the hitmen about $8,000 to carry out the attack. The outlet reported that Dominican police “said he was captured off the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic en route to Puerto Rico.”
Ortiz is expected to recover from the attack.