Slaying suspect returned to U.S.
A suspect in a California slaying was flown by chartered jet to Los Angeles after losing a five-year legal battle to stay in Australia, an official said Wednesday.
Lawrence John Rivera, 36, who is wanted in the 2002 strangulation of 26-year-old Kristina Garcia in Barstow, was escorted by seven U.S. marshals from a Sydney prison to a Learjet for his return to the U.S., said Andrew Downs, a spokesman for New South Wales state Atty. Gen. John Hatzistergos.
Downs did not know when the jet was scheduled to land in Los Angeles. Rivera, a former U.S. Army civilian employee who was featured on the TV program “America’s Most Wanted,” faces one count of murder and a potential sentence of life in prison.
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