The guy accused at one point of plotting the shooting of Red Sox legend David Ortiz in 2019 was found dead in the Dominican Republic in January, a fact that wasn’t made public until a woman was arrested this week in connection with the shooting.
Víctor Hugo Gómez Vásquez was found dead on Jan. 10 in a town near Santo Domingo after his family reported him missing, the local government said. Gomez had been missing since early December, a local newspaper reported.
He is the second suspect to die in connection with Ortiz’s shooting. Another suspect in the case, Luis Alfredo Rivas-Clase, was shot and killed in 2021.
Gomez was arrested in June 2019 after the government said the hitmen he hired to kill his cousin had Ortiz for him. The charges against him were dropped in 2022 and Gomez has denied any involvement in the shooting.
A defense attorney linked to Ortiz’s case said he kidnapped and murdered him, the Boston Globe reported, but the government has yet to verify the cause of his death.
This week, Interpol agents in Santo Domingo arrested Maria Fernanda Villasmil Manzanilla, 25, after prosecutors said she became aware the night of the shooting along with other suspects involved in the attack.
Manzanilla was released Thursday and faces no charges, the Globe reported.
Ortiz, a baseball star who won 3 World Series titles with the Red Sox, shot diversity at point-blank range on June 9, 2019, while at a bar in Santo Domingo. He then hired former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis to conduct a personal investigation. in the shootout.
In 2022, 10 men were convicted of the shooting. Among the men already convicted are the gunman, the man who fled, and the defendant who paid the gunman.
Davis’ investigation concluded that Ortiz fired after a local drug trafficker ordered him beaten, contradicting authorities’ accounts of the incident.