Speaking publicly for the first time about prospect Oneil Cruz being involved in a crash that killed three people last week in the Dominican Republic, Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Ben Cherington warned “there’s not a single piece of evidence from what we’ve seen that this is anything but an accident.”

The 21-year-old Cruz was arrested early Monday morning after his vehicle collided with a motorcyle carrying two men and a woman on the Baní-San Cristóbal section of the Sánchez highway. Reports out of the Dominican Republic said Cruz was accused of driving under the influence of alcohol, an assertion his attorney disputed on social media.

“What we’ve done since we learned about it is really just focus on learning as much as we can about what happened, and supporting Oneil through that,” Cherington said Sunday on his weekly radio show on 93.7 FM. “This is a young man with a really bright future who was invovled in a bad accident — and I want to emphasize that word ‘accident.’ There’s not a single piece of evidence from what we’ve seen is that this is anything but an accident.”

After a hearing Friday afternoon, Cruz was released on a bail of $2 million pesos ($34,000 U.S. currency) with periodic presentation, which requires him to appear before the court every month. The 6-foot-7 shortstop, who is ranked the No. 3 prospect in the organization by MLB.com, spent the summer at the alternate training site in Altoona. Cherington said Cruz requested an early return to the Dominican Republic because his girlfriend is pregnant and “was having some complications” and he wanted to help support her.

“Oneil’s done a great job in Altoona, done everything we asked him to do, worked hard for four months there and improved,” Cherington said, “so we felt like that was a really reasonable request.”

Cherington said the Pirates have sympathy for the three victims who were killed in the accident — ages 23, 20 and 19 — and will be grieving for their families, as well as for Cruz. The trio were on a motorcycle that didn’t have headlights or tail lights, and the accident occurred after the 9 p.m. curfew imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

On Saturday, in a Facebook post lashing out at the media, attorney Yajaira Gomez Ortiz said Cruz attempted to help the victims and called 911 to report the crash. She also claimed “that the Public Ministry never mentioned that he was under the influence before publishing false information,” and cautioned to consider Cruz’s mental health.

Cherington echoed that sentiment on his radio show Sunday.

“We will support him,” Cherington said. “It’s just a really hard and tragic situation. It’s also a strong reminder that we need to avoid a rush to judgment. We need to keep learning, listening, fact-finding, making sure we get all the information we have and really think about all the people impacted by something like this.

“Imagine if Oneil was your son and involved in something like this. Of course, you’d want to know everything you can. You feel empathy, sympathy certainly, and your heart would go out to the families of those who lost their lives. You also want to really make sure that he was supported and treated fairly through it. That’s been our focus. We’ll contnue to do that with Oneil. He’s been extremely cooperative, doing everything that’s asked of him. He’ll need some time to deal with this and grieve, and we’ll continue to support him through that.”

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