For 48 hours, Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos did not know whether he would ever see his family and friends again. Snatched by kidnappers on Wednesday evening, Ramos endured two harrowing days in captivity before finally returning safe to the Santa Ines neighborhood where he grew up in the Venezuelan city of Valencia, which even at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday was in the midst of a raucous, riotous celebration.
“I never heard so many gun shots. I thought this only happened in the movies,” Ramos said. “I didn’t think anyone could find me in the woods. It was three hours from the road. I am grateful to be alive and with my family.”
Ramos had been talking with family members in front of his mother’s house in Valencia when an orange 2007 Chevrolet Activa stopped and three gunmen ushered the 24-year-old into the car. He was driven to the town of Bejuma, where his abductors switched cars. They burned the Activa and drove him seven miles farther into the western mountains of Carabobo state to the town of Montalban.
Six people have been arrested. Venezuelan authorities identified four of them as Gregory Alexander Lozada, 29; Francisco Antonio Finamore, 29; Alexander Jimenez Josnar, 21; and Tarazona Anyuli, 21. An unidentified older couple, ages 60 and 74, supplied Ramos with food during his ordeal, which lasted about 50 hours.
What the kidnappers didn’t know late Friday evening, according to sources with knowledge of Ramos’ rescue, was that police already had arrested one member of their group and subsequently learned the location of the hideout in Montalban. Members of the criminal investigative unit known as the Body of Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations (CICPC) carried out an aerial assault on the farmhouse. That unit had been in Valencia since Thursday morning and was charged with finding Ramos and apprehending his kidnappers.
Members of CICPC worked with Venezuela’s National Division for anti-extortion and kidnappings and the National Guard’s anti-extortion unit. The operation was led by policy chiefs Roger Mendez, Luis Sifontes and Luis Rodriguez, sub-chief Franklin Inojosa and chief inspector Gilberto Contreras. Inspectors Jose Dlima, David Pena and Jesus De la Cruz also contributed. The effort was supported by the Commission of Caracas.
The kidnappers simply told Ramos that they would ask for a large ransom and that would happen within three or four days. Ramos was never blindfolded. He spent the majority of time in a bedroom in a farmhouse in Montalbon and was fed regularly and not physically harmed. The abductors’ accents indicated to Ramos that at least some of them were of Colombian descent. The elderly couple was in charge of bringing him meals. Ramos was in bed when the rescue raid began shortly after sunset. There was an exchange of gunfire before the kidnappers finally surrendered.
A cell phone found near the Activa, the original car used to transport Ramos, apparently allowed investigators to track down one of the suspects, whose sketch already had been drawn on the basis of testimony from Ramos’ older brother, Jonathan, and one of his cousins. Both witnessed Ramos’ abduction Wednesday night.
The scene in Santa Ines was chaotic in the early morning, according to Lili Mayorca, whose home Ramos stayed at when he was a 20-year-old playing for single-A Fort Myers in the Minnesota Twins organization in 2008.
Mayorca, a West Palm Beach, Fla., resident who says over the last 13 years she has housed 233 Latin ballplayers adjusting to life in the United States, spoke by phone with Marfa Mata, a close friend of the Ramos family who was at their house in Valencia. Also there was Ramos’ brother, Natanael, 18, who is a baseball player in the Dominican Republic and immediately flew home upon learning his brother was missing. Jonathan Ramos and the youngest member of the family, Manuel, 13 and a catcher like his brothers, were also on hand as was sister Milanyela, 21. Their faith and patience had been rewarded.
“You could hear outside in the street in front of the house where Wilson got kidnapped, everybody was celebrating. You could hear the noise and more and more people showing up,” Mayorca said of her conversation with Mata. “All the baseball players keep calling me and saying, ‘Mom, is it true? Is it true?’ I’m so happy to tell them it is.”
