Parolee Arrested in Fatal Alley Row

Pedro Rivera, 30, a prison parolee, has been arrested in the slaying of a longshoreman who had asked him to move his car from the alley it was blocking, police said.

Rivera, a Cuban who came to the United States in the late 1970s aboard the Mariel boat lift, was arrested Friday in a Wilmington motel and booked on suspicion of murder in the death Tuesday of Vernon Brookshire, detective Richard Hoffman said.

Brookshire, 42, was a passenger in a car that pulled from the longshoremen’s union hall parking lot at 424 N. Avalon Blvd. into an alley about 11:15 a.m. and found another car blocking its path. The driver honked, bringing Rivera out of a nearby business, Hoffman said.

When Brookshire got out and asked him to move his car, police said, Rivera pulled a gun and shot him to death, then drove off.