David Ortiz Was Targeted by Cesar Peralta in 2019 Shooting, Private Investigator Says

A drug kingpin targeted Boston Red Sox legend David Ortiz when he was shot in June 2019 based on the findings of a private investigator.

The Boston Globe's Bob Hohler reported that Ed Davis, a former police commissioner in Boston, conducted a six-month investigation. Davis said that Cesar Peralta "came to feel disrespected by Ortiz, prompting him to place a bounty on Ortiz's head and sanction the ragtag hit squad that tried to kill him."

Joaquin Perez, an attorney for Peralta denied the allegation and said he "had nothing to do with" the attempt on Ortiz's life, per Hohler. Perez also said Ortiz and Peralta were "close friends," with the Hall of Famer denying that was the extent of his rapport with Peralta.

Ortiz was shot once in the back in his native Dominican Republic. After he was transported to a local hospital, doctors removed his gall bladder and part of his intestine.

Dominican authorities said at the time that seven men had been paid to execute the attack. However, the country's attorney general subsequently said that Ortiz was shot because of a case of mistaken identity.

Ric Prado, a former CIA official, was part of the investigation into Ortiz's shooting. He alleged to Hohler that Dominican officials forwarded the mistaken identity idea as part of a cover-up. 

"We understood the attorney general was trying to make [Peralta's possible involvement] go away because if Peralta went down, many people in the government were going to go down," Prado said.

Despite all of the information Davis gleaned from his investigation, Hohler wrote that "precisely why Peralta may have felt so disrespected that he would order Ortiz slain remains murky."

Ortiz eventually recovered from the shooting and threw out the first pitch at Fenway Park ahead of a Red Sox game in September 2019.