VALENCIA, Venezuela — His eyes tearing up with emotion, Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos embraced his rescuers Saturday and said he had wondered whether he would survive a two-day kidnapping ordeal that ended when commandos swept into his captors’ mountain hideout.
Ramos said that he was happy and thankful to be alive a day after his rescue, saying that his final moments as a prisoner were hair-raising as police and the kidnappers exchanged heavy gunfire in the remote area where he was being held. He said his kidnappers had carefully planned the abduction and told him they were going to demand a large ransom.
“I didn’t know if I was going to get out of it alive,” Ramos told reporters at a police station in his hometown of Valencia, flanked by police investigators, national guard commanders and justice minister Tareck El Aissami. “It was very hard for me. It was very hard for my family.”
El Aissami said authorities arrested four of the captors, all of them Venezuelan men in their 20s. A 60-year-old woman and a 74-year-old man were also arrested as accomplices for supplying the kidnappers with food from their home in the area, he said. The six suspects were led past journalists at the police station with black hoods over their heads.
Authorities were still searching for four Colombian men who escaped during the rescue, El Aissami said. He didn’t say whether anyone was wounded in the gun battle.
Ramos, 24, was seized at gunpoint outside his family’s home Wednesday night and whisked away in an SUV. It was the first known kidnapping of a major-league baseball player in Venezuela, and the abduction set off an outpouring of candlelight vigils and public prayers at stadiums as well as outside Ramos’ house.
Red Sox interview Lamont
BOSTON — It’s not as if Gene Lamont suddenly decided he wanted to manage again.
“It’s kind of a burning desire. It always has been,” La- mont, who hasn’t managed in 12 years, told reporters at Fenway Park after interviewing for the job as Terry Francona’s replacement with the Red Sox. “Baseball is a passion.”
Lamont was the fifth and — for now — final candidate to interview for the Boston managerial job, following Torey Lovullo, Pete Mackanin, Dale Sveum and Sandy Alomar Jr.
