AP Features, March 28th, 2007
Authorities have arrested three people in the slaying of a Puerto Rican labor leader, including the administrator of a beachfront vacation complex for union members that was under scrutiny for financial irregularities, the island's top police official said Wednesday.
A fourth suspect was still being sought in the shooting death of Wallis Rivera Rodriguez, secretary of the powerful sewer workers union, who was killed March 12 outside his home, Police Superintendent Pedro Toledo said.
Investigators believe Rivera was killed because he was about to reveal possible financial wrongdoing in the management of the vacation complex, Toledo said.
Union officials have said the secretary was at the vacation complex just days before he was shot to death. The property about 300 apartments for union members and their families and rooms for special events in Loiza, a palm-shaded beach town east of San Juan.
The three people in custody were expected to be charged later Wednesday. The fourth suspect is believe to be the gunman, who Toledo said was paid by the administrator.
Rivera, 51, was shot five times from a pickup truck that pulled up to his home in Rio Piedras, a city in the San Juan metropolitan area. He had worked for the union for 30 years and ran unopposed for the position of secretary in December.
The union, which has more than 4,000 members, has long been among the most powerful in the U.S. island territory, but it lost some of its influence last year when the former president and several members of the executive committee were convicted of embezzling from the union medical plan.
