Washington Nationals Catcher Wilson Ramos Kidnapped In Venezuela

One of the most productive players on the Washington Nationals was kidnapped late yesterday from his home in Venezuela:

Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos has been kidnapped in his hometown of Valencia, Venezuela, according to his Venezuelan winter league team.

Ramos, 24, had gone home for the winter and planned to participate in roughly 10 games with Tigres de Aragua, starting Thursday. He is one of the Nationals’ best, most promising players, a rookie this past season who became the Nationals’ regular catcher.

Four people, armed, went into Ramos’s family’s house Wednesday night and took Ramos, and only Ramos, out of the house, put him in a green vehicle and sped away, according to multiple news reports out of Venezuela. Ramos’s family has not established communication with the kidnappers, the reports said.

In a crime and safety report this year, the State Department described kidnappings in Venezuela as “a growing industry.” In 2009, according to an estimate in the crime and safety report, “there was an alarming 9.2 incidents of kidnapping per 100,000 inhabitants in Venezuela.”

Many of the kidnappings that take place in the country are so-called “express” kidnappings, in which armed men drive a victim around and take money before returning him. The crime and safety report stated that “groups that specialize in these types of crimes operate with impunity or fear of incarceration.”

Ramos is apparently alive, although that’s not surprising since this seems like a pretty obvious kidnap-for-ransom case.

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Franklin says:

    Oh, dear, where to assign blame … our wildly successful drug war, or the wildly successful president Chavez? Or maybe our insatiable appetite for baseball that results in baseball players being worth millions upon millions of dollars?

  2. Delmar says:

    Isn’t there something that the US can do about this? It seems that we could send in a small special forces team that could get him out. It looks like the Venezuelan government isn’t doing much at all, I don’t know. How about our ambassador down there? Are they doing anything?