David Ortiz has broken his silence since being shot in the Dominican Republic…. acknowledging in an interview with Univision that he almost died.
“I almost died, man,” a teary-eyed Ortiz explained. “I was in a coma. People were criticizing me as if I deserved to be killed.”
“I was feeling something that I had never felt before and that was just the feeling of trying to survive,” he continued.
Ortiz and a friend were partying at a bar in Santo Domingo on June 9 when a gunman opened fire, allegedly trying to kill Ortiz’s pal, Sixto David Fernandez.
“When the bullet hit me, the first thing I felt was like a sting. The first five seconds I thought I was having a nightmare. [Then] a man named Eliezer, who I am very thankful for, he helped me and took me to the hospital,” he recalled.
The former Boston Red Sox slugger also dismissed reports that he was a target of a failed hit. “I don’t have enemies. I don’t know why anyone would want to do this to me,” he told Univision.
Ortiz was released from the hospital at the end of July and has been recovering at home.
He has reportedly hired former Boston Police Commissioner and current CBS Boston security analyst Ed Davis to investigate the motive of the shooting, per CBS.com.
In separate an interview with the Boston Globe, Ortiz said “I want to find out who did this.”
Adding, “I’m not going to sit around and chill if there’s somebody out there who wants to kill me.”
