After a couple of months of recovery and relative silence, former Red Sox star David Ortiz is taking action. First, and most important, Ortiz appears to be well on the road to full recovery. But he’s also not sitting idly by after his June 9 shooting. He has hired a firm in Boston to investigate his shooting, including the motive behind it.
“He’s damn interested in finding out what really happened,’’ Ortiz’s spokesman Joe Baerlein told The Boston Globe.
Ortiz, who was released from the hospital in late July, also posted a photo of himself on Instagram dropping his daughter off at college. He looks well and recovered.
Laying low
In a well-documented case, Ortiz was sitting in a nightclub in the Dominican Republic the night of June 9 when a gunman entered and shot the future Hall of Famer in the back. Surveillance video caught the incident.
After a short investigation, Dominican police declared Big Papi was shot for a bounty. Weeks later, they revised their report, calling the incident a case of mistaken identity. But several reports dispute that theory, too.
Baerlein said Ortiz has not spoken to investigators in the Dominican Republic since the shooting. He hasn’t spoken to U.S. authorities about it at all.
“David has been carefully monitoring the government and police investigation,’’ Baerlein told the Globe. “He had no basis for a long time to challenge their theory of mistaken identity. However, as new facts continue to come up, it lends some optimism that there may be some other conclusions that are drawn before it’s over about why David was shot.’’
Time for action
But when the Dominican government began to reconsider jailing one of the men responsible for Ortiz’s shooting, his camp began to wonder about the true motives behind both the shooting and the investigation.
That’s when, Baerlein says, Ortiz hired former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis to lead a team to further investigate the incident.
“We’re open to these new facts perhaps shedding more light on what exactly the motive was for people shooting David,’’ Baerlein told the Globe. “Maybe something will turn up. Stay tuned.’’
David Ortiz remains so puzzled about why a stranger shot him nearly three months ago that he has hired former Boston police commissioner Ed Davis to dispatch a team of private investigators to scour the Dominican Republic for answers. https://t.co/SCBrkLUjgo
— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) August 26, 2019
