An investigation in the Boston Globe newspaper reveals that the spokesman for the National Police in the Dominican Republic, Colonel Frank Felix Duran Mejia has been on the payroll of Major League Baseball for over a decade. Indeed he is one of three high-ranking Dominican law enforcement officials employed as MLB resident security agents.
The revelation is new even in the Dominican Republic. It adds to the local and international skepticism around the Dominican police and attorney general conclusions on the shooting against Red Sox retired baseball player David Ortiz in a bar in eastern Santo Domingo. The Police concluded it was a case of mistaken identity and that the bullets were aimed at Sixto David Fernández instead over a family grudge with his cousin Victor Hugo Gómez Vásquez.
The Boston Globe reports:
“The arrangement, at least to the few who have known of it, raises questions about Duran’s loyalties at a time when the police’s shifting accounts of the near-fatal June 9 shooting of Ortiz have been met with widespread skepticism. And security specialists who have worked in the Dominican Republic said the close ties with MLB inevitably raise questions about the objectivity of police officials.”
The Boston Globe is also reporting that the ballplayer has hired a former police chief of Boston to look into findings of the Dominican police regarding the shooting.
The La Cuestion radio talk show on Friday, 23 August shares an audio by Victor Hugo Gomez Vásquez, whom the Dominican police accused of the murder, and who says that investigations should be carried out into the main source of income of his cousin, Sixto David Fernández Vásquez.
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Boston Globe
Boston Globe
La Cuestion
26 August 2019