The Dominican Baseball guy wants to update the
Angel Villalona story which I posted on a few weeks ago
here. Apparently he made a payment to the victim of the family which will take care of any civil action that the family may have
seeked against
Villalona. Andrew
Baggarly posted
this on his blog, citing an
AP story. The
Listin Diario daily
newspaper in
Santo Domingo also released
this article. You can use
this free translator from Verbatim Solutions if you want to read the
Spanish article.
There is a good discussion at the
Baggarly blog and at a
blog post by Garrett Broshuis, a former teammate of
Villalona.
This is a sticky situation. He made a payment to
diffuse the possibility of later civil actions by the family. Some think this may admit guilt. I for one do not think this admits guilt. The justice system is not perfect in the US. In the DR, it is even less perfect (corruption, underfunding, and
understaffng being major problems). I posted on my original post that there are witnesses from both sides (some saying he did it, others saying he was outside). I think extortion is a very high possibility, if friends of the victim thought they could get money out of Angel, they could have concocted a story.
And the prosecutor is also a politician, so he could be using this for his own gains. The things I find strange are that they have not recovered a gun, nor have they proven that Angel ever owned a gun, and that the only motive they have mentioned is that there was a fight over a seat. Not a very strong case in my opinion.
I said that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of the Dominican Baseball Guy in the original post, and I continue to believe this. The latest news is that
Angel has had his visa revoked by the US, so whether he is guilty or not this is not good news for him.
