The police in the Dominican Republic are reporting the arrest of a man they claim is the “mastermind” behind the shooting of former Red Sox slugger David Ortiz.
The government reported that Victor Hugo Gomez Vasquez was arrested in the country’s capital of Santo Domingo, according to the New York Post.
Along with being accused by the Dominican Republic of planning the attempted murder of the MLB player, the U.S. also seeks Vasquez’s arrest on drug trafficking charges.
Dominican police say that Vasquez put up $8,000 to pay for the shooting of Ortiz friend David Fernandez. Vasquez reportedly took out the contract killing because he thought Fernandez was informing on him to the U.S. government.
The attempted assassination was caught on the surveillance video of a bar where Ortiz and Fernandez were sitting at a table.
The grainy video shows the 43-year-old Ortiz and his party sitting at a table near the bar when a man slowly walks up behind the former MLB player, pulls out a pistol, and opens fire.
The Sox slugger then crumples to the ground as bar patrons scramble to get away from the scene.
Immediately after the shooting, the suspect was identified by local news station CDN 37 as Eddy Feliz Garcia, 23, according to the New York Post.
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