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Venezuelan Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos waves as he arrived at his home after being rescued in Valencia on Nov. 12, 2011. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Major League Baseball catcher Wilson Ramos, who was kidnapped and held ransom in Venezuela for more than two days, was released over the weekend, according to reports. He was not harmed in the ordeal.
Ramos was “found alive by security forces in a mountainous zone,” Information Minister Andres Izarra said on Saturday, according to a Twitter posting.
Ramos, a 24-year-old Venezuelan-born catcher for the Washington Nationals, was located by Venezuelan security forces in the Montalban mountains near where he was taken, reported the Washington Post.
When describing the end of the ordeal, Ramos said the Venezuelan security forces exchanged heavy gunfire with his kidnappers before he was freed.
He said the gunmen held him in a cabin in the mountains and threatened to kill him unless his family paid them ransom money, according to the newspaper.
“For a few moments,” Ramos told the paper. “I thought I would never see my family and that was something painful, super painful.”
Ramos was abducted at his mother’s house in the town of Valencia, where he was born. It is located around 90 miles west of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.
