L.A. Volunteer, Peruvian Slain by Andean Rebels

Leftist rebels dragged a U.S. agricultural adviser and a Peruvian colleague from their farm truck and shot them to death, officials said Wednesday.

Police Col. Cirilo Pacheco and the National Agrarian Research Institute identified the victims as Constantine Orson Gregory, 25, of Los Angeles, and Gustavo Rojas, 35, of Lima.

Pacheco said three Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas halted the agronomists’ pickup truck Monday evening on an isolated road in the central Andes Mountains, then shot each man twice in the back of the head.

Reporters on the scene said the guerrillas wrote in red ink across a notebook belonging to Gregory: “This is the way the lackeys of Yankee imperialism die.”

The police colonel said the attackers blew up the agronomists’ truck and escaped. He said 30 suspects have been arrested in sweeps of the region.

The two men and Gregory’s American wife, Dolores, who is in Lima awaiting the birth of the couple’s first child, were living in Aramachay, a hamlet 15 miles north of Huancayo, a major city in the central Andes 125 miles east of Lima, institute officials said.

The attack came four days after pro-Cuban guerrillas lobbed three mortar rounds at the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Lima, causing minor damage but no injuries.

The U.S. Embassy said Wednesday that Gregory and Rojas were teaching peasant farmers methods to improve production of sheep and small farm animals.

The embassy said the men worked for the agrarian institute on a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development near Huancayo.

Gregory had been working on the project only a few months and was preparing to return to the United States in August to pursue a doctoral degree, a U.S. development official said.

Gregory graduated with a degree in economics from UC-Santa Cruz in 1984, an official at the college said Wednesday.