A Boston man shot and killed more than a week ago while making produce deliveries in Vermont stood in a courtroom almost exactly a year ago where he got a break on his sentence for his role in a large-scale cocaine dealing ring.
Investigators probing the homicide of 44-year-old Roberto Fonseca-Rivera in Rockingham aren’t saying whether they believe his connection to that case played a role in his shooting death on the afternoon of Nov. 1 when he was found in his company truck pulled over alongside Route 103.
“I’m not going to get into any specifics in that regard,” Vermont State Police Detective Lt. John-Paul Schmidt told reporters during a briefing on the investigation Friday at the state police barracks in Westminster.
The detective told reporters that since the investigation remains ongoing, there was little he could publicly reveal about the probe, including whether others charged along with Fonseca-Rivera in that drug ring, or those who investigated that case, had been tapped for information.
“We’ve been contacted by some connections or associates from out of state,” Schmidt said.
“With almost every investigation, we work with other agencies,” the detective said before adding, “I can’t really get into who we’re talking to or we’re not talking to for this case.”
Court records in that drug case show that Fonseca-Rivera admitted to his role in the operation. Several documents in his case had been filed under seal.
A transcript of Fonseca-Rivera’s sentencing hearing from a year ago doesn’t provide any clues into why records in his case were sealed. However, the transcript does reveal he got a much lower sentence than federal guidelines called for.
The transcript also paints a picture of Fonseca-Rivera, a father of three who had been married for more than 20 years, as a hardworking man who moved to Massachusetts from Puerto Rico in 2014 in search of a better life.
“My dad is the motor that keeps this family running,” his son, identified only as Giovanni in court records, said at the Nov. 8, 2018, hearing in federal court in Boston.
“And like I said,” the son added, “me without my father is like not having motivation to push forward and it’s like taking away my other half.”
The son, who at the time was a college student studying criminal justice, concluded his remarks by telling the judge, “Please don’t take him from my side. He’s my everything.”
Judge Denise Casper sentenced Fonseca-Rivera to a year and a day in federal prison after he had earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
Fonseca-Rivera’s attorney had asked for a sentence of no prison time. Prosecutors had sought a sentence of 18 months in prison for him.
The federal sentencing guidelines, which serve in an advisory role for judges, called for a prison sentence of between 46 and 57 months behind bars.
It is not clear when Fonseca-Rivera was released from prison.
Fonseca-Rivera, who had no previous criminal record, was one of five Massachusetts people convicted in that drug case, and he received the least amount of prison time.
Carlos Reyes of Framingham, Massachusetts, described as a leader of the operation who has a lengthy criminal record, received the longest prison sentence of the group, 17½ years.
Jerry O’Neill, a Burlington attorney and former federal prosecutor in Vermont not connected to the case, said the sealing of records combined with a light sentence are indications that a person may have been cooperating with investigators.
“With the sentence that (Fonseca-Rivera) got I thought to myself that this may well have been somebody who was cooperating and that could possibly connect to his death,” O’Neill said Monday.
“You could tie together all of these things and that certainly would suggest that he was someone who had cooperated with the government and that this could well be a retaliatory killing,” O’Neill said.
O’Neill added that federal courts take great pains to keep information regarding a person’s cooperation from the public record, including sealing documents.
“The federal courts have come to the realization that they must take fairly strong steps to try to protect the fact that people are cooperating because of the availability of information from Pacer,” he said.
Pacer is the online records management system for federal courts. It allows federal court documents to be publicly available online for a fee.
The drug operation involved shipments of kilos of cocaine through the U.S. Postal Service from Puerto Rico to Massachusetts.
According to the transcript of the sentencing hearing, Fonseca-Rivera’s role was to pick up mailed shipments of cocaine from Puerto Rico at different locations in Massachusetts, which he said he did about a half-dozen times.
Prosecutors in the case said Fonseca-Rivera was recruited into the drug ring by his brother-in-law Angel Morales, who received an eight-year prison term.
Vermont State Police spent Friday afternoon canvassing the area of Route 103 where Fonseca-Rivera was found dead inside his truck one week earlier.
Troopers handed out flyers to motorists, as they sought any information that may aid the investigation.
Schmidt, the state police detective, said Friday that investigators were trying to contact people who typically travel that area of Route 103 at that time to see if they saw anything unusual on the afternoon of the killing.
Fonseca-Rivera, according to police, was working on Nov. 1 for Katsiroubas Produce of Boston, Massachusetts.
He had been in Vermont making deliveries in a company box truck, with his last known location at about 12:15 p.m. that afternoon leaving the 99 Restaurant in Rutland Town before heading south on Route 103 toward Rockingham.
Investigators said they believe the shooting took place sometime between 1 and 1:30 p.m. Friday near where Fonseca-Rivera’s vehicle was located in Rockingham.
An autopsy revealed Fonseca-Rivera had been fatally shot in the head and neck, according to police. The windshield of his truck appeared to have bullet damage.
Fonseca-Rivera addressed the judge during his sentencing hearing a year ago.
“I always want to push my family forward, not with this situation that got me into trouble, but always working legitimately,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Fonseca-Rivera added. “I will never be involved in a problem like this. I’m very sorry. This is not what I wanted to give my family.”