Fort Bragg warrant officer charged in deaths of two of his children
RACHAEL RILEY | The Fayetteville Observer
A Fort Bragg warrant officer is facing court-martial early next year on two charges of murder in the deaths of two of his children 61 days apart in late 2017 and early 2018.
According to the Fort Bragg charge sheet, Warrant Officer Anthony S. Rivera was arraigned Aug. 18.
Rivera is assigned to D Company, 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.
His military records state he joined the Army on June 12, 2008, and became a chief warrant officer on May 17, 2017. He's been at Fort Bragg since September 2017.
His court-martial is slated to begin Jan. 31.
The charge sheet alleges Rivera inflicted “blunt force trauma” on the children resulting in their deaths.
Cumberland County vital records and records from the N.C. Medical Examiner state Michael Rivera, 3, died Nov. 18, 2017, and Olivia Rivera, 2, died Jan. 14, 2018.
Rivera is also charged with failing to obtain medical treatment for the children.
According to the state medical examiner's report, the children were in foster care when Rivera and his wife adopted them in August 2017. The following month, the family — including Rivera's three other children — moved to Harnett County.
On the day Michael died, emergency crews were called to a Walmart parking lot in Fayetteville shortly after 4 p.m. Rivera's wife said she was taking Michael to the hospital when he collapsed in the car, the report states. She said the child and her husband were at home while she and her other children were out running errands, and that when she returned home, Michael woke from a nap "pale, staring off and moaning," according to the report.
An off-duty nurse who happened to be nearby when Rivera's wife stopped her car for help began CPR on the child, but the 3-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene, the report states. Among myriad injuries, the 30-pound boy had a ruptured aorta in his stomach and separated vertebrae in his back, along with bruises and contusions to his face. His cause of death was listed as blunt force trauma of the torso.
According to the autopsy report for Olivia, a month before her brother died, the 2-year-old girl was seen at a local hospital for a fracture to her wrist and a possible fracture to her forearm, the report states. Three days after her brother died, she was seen by a doctor for a well-child visit. At that time, due to developmental delays as a result of her birth mother's drug use during pregnancy, she was enrolled in occupational and speech therapy and she attended sessions in December, early January and four days before she died.
On the day she died, the autopsy report states, the family reported she was put in her crib between 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. when she was found by her mother an hour later face down and unresponsive. EMS was called to the family home on Cromwell Circle in the Harnett County portion of Cameron, where CPR was attempted, and the child was transported to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead after a total of 50 minutes of CPR. An emergency room doctor remembered the girl from her previous visit for the fractured arm and also informed the medical examiner that her brother had died two months earlier, the report states.
At autopsy, the 32-pound girl was found to have a number of injuries to include separation of vertebrae in her back, a fracture of the femur, fracture of the upper arm, multiple tendon or ligament injuries, scattered contusions of the head and extremities and healing fractures of the clavicle and ribs. Because of the many small hemorrhages of blood vessels on the face, right eye, neck and shoulder, the pathologist could not rule out asphyxiation as a component of her death.
"Based on autopsy findings, toxicology results, and circumstances surrounding the death, as currently understood, the cause of death is multiple blunt force injuries," the report states. "The manner of death is classified as homicide."
Cumberland County death certificates, filed a second time on Feb. 18, 2019, listed the cause of death for each child as homicide.
A spokesman for the Harnett County Sheriff's Office said a joint investigation was conducted with the Army Criminal Investigation Command and that prosecutors in Harnett County declined to pursue criminal charges against Rivera and his wife, instead ceding the investigation to the Army in early 2020.
It was not clear why it took more than two years after the deaths were ruled as homicides for charges to be filed.
Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.
F.T. Norton, military and public safety editor, contributed to this report.