Cop shooting suspect says he was forced to confess
-
Emilio Rivera
Share with others:
Emilio Rivera claims that Allegheny County homicide detectives forced him into giving a false confession in the shooting of a Clairton police officer by threatening to arrest his girlfriend and have his infant son taken away.
"I feel like they can do whatever they want," Mr. Rivera testified at a motion hearing Friday. "I just basically went along with whatever he said and concocted it into my own story.
"I'm at the point where I have to sacrifice myself for the betterment of my family."
Mr. Rivera, along with his co-defendant, Marcus Andrejco, have filed motions with the court to suppress their statements in the home invasion and shooting of Officer James Kuzak.
Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski took the matter under advisement. The case is scheduled to go to trial in April.
Mr. Rivera said that at first when he was questioned on Oct. 26 about his involvement, he denied it, and claimed not to know Mr. Andrejco.
However, after detectives kept telling him that the "DA was out to fry" him, Mr. Rivera said he bowed to their pressure.
"I was forced to make that statement," he said.
After going through the story two or three times with the detectives telling him exactly what he needed to say, he made a recording in which he confessed to his involvement in the April 4 incident on Miller Avenue.
Throughout the 26-minute recording, he insisted that it was Mr. Andrejco, who he referred to as "Marc," who had a gun and fired the shots at the officer. He claimed he only went along on the robbery as a lookout so he could get a cut of the proceeds.
The detectives were so insistent he stick to the story line, Mr. Rivera claimed, that one of them held up a piece of paper with the word "dog" on it to remind him to mention a Rottweiler in the home.
He also, at the end of the statement, apologized for his actions.
"I'm sorry that happened to him," Mr. Rivera said. "I never thought in a million years I'd be in a situation like that."
But during a tough cross-examination by chief trial deputy district attorney Dan Fitzsimmons, Mr. Rivera admitted that he ad-libbed throughout the statement to make his story sound more convincing.
Much of the ad-libbing, Mr. Fitzsimmons insinuated, were intimate details of the crime.
At the end of the recording, Mr. Rivera says that he was not threatened to tell his story.
"This is exactly what happened," he said. "I could tell this story a million times, and it would be the same."
First Published February 4, 2012 12:00 am
