A Miami man is speaking out after surviving a violent attack that left him hospitalized, allegedly at the hands of a bare-knuckle fighter.
The suspect, who authorities said later tried to evade arrest by scaling the side of a high-rise in Edgewater, was ultimately taken into custody by a SWAT team.
Victim describes terrifying encounter
Richard De Paula, 22, moved to Miami about a year ago to pursue a career in financial investment.
“I like networking. So networking is your net worth and Miami is a really good place for you to do that,” De Paula said.
He later began seeing Lillian Goodman, who asked him to invest $2,000 of her money.
“It’s a micro loan, they pay more interest. So, I told her, hey, your money is going to come in within a month. A month and a half. She’s like, okay, but she started asking for her money, like, two weeks after, because she stopped working,” he said.
De Paula said the two agreed to meet on April 1, but instead, he said Goodman broke into his apartment, bringing someone with her.
“The guy walks in, and I start recording, because I see the, like, the thing on his eyes. I was scared. Honestly, this guy came in, like he wanted to kill me.”
According to the arrest report, that man was Peter Alexander Peraza, known on social media as “Dirt 2 Gold,” a bare-knuckle fighter with a significant following.
“You guys just barged into my house. You just punched me in the face. He’s like, bro, you don’t know who you’re messing with. Yeah. And then he was like, don’t even try to call one of your boys downstairs to, like, get me, because I’ll f—— kill you,” De Paula recalled.
Escape and arrest after high-rise climb
De Paula said even after he Zelled the money, Peraza continued attacking him, destroyed parts of his apartment, and began stealing expensive items.
“Start running down the stairs. And then that’s when I actually broke my foot going from the 10th to the nine, but she was chasing me with the baseball bat, so I still kept going from the nine to the eighth with the broken foot.”
First responders rushed De Paula to the hospital, where he underwent surgery. Police arrested Goodman, but Peraza fled and remained on the run until Tuesday.
That day, he was caught on camera scaling several floors of a high-rise building in Edgewater in an apparent attempt to evade capture.
“On the corner of the building, you could see, actually him on the outside of the balcony, which at that point, it was like, okay, that’s crazy,” said Karina, a witness.
“We’re all thinking the inevitable, that he’s not going to make it, he’s going to fall. These buildings are very high,” said another resident, Lauren Bergman.
Surveillance video shows Peraza breaking into a unit mid-climb.
“People were panicking about not being home. Their balcony doors not being locked. Nobody really thinks that when you live in a high rise you have to lock your balcony door,” Bergman said.
She later recorded video of the SWAT team escorting Peraza out of the building.
“All of this to catch this guy, I thought was going to be so much easier, just like, hey, he’s arrested. But it became, like a movie scene—that’s insane,” De Paula said.
In court Wednesday, a judge denied bond for one of the charges against Peraza, meaning he will remain behind bars.
