Rt. 103 murder suspect to be released on bail Piri pleads not guilty, must surrender passports and guns

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2021 Telegraph Publishing LLC

A Florida physician who owns a second home in Londonderry pled not guilty Monday to a charge of second degree murder in the 2019 shooting death of Roberto Fonseca-Rivera during a virtual arraignment and will be released on bond.

He will be released on $250,000 bond after fulfilling two conditions, then be returned to his Naples, Fla., home.

Jozsef Piri, 49, appeared from Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield with Judge John Treadwell presiding in White River Junction. Piri’s attorney, Adam Hescock, entered the not guilty plea and told Treadwell that the defense and the state had reached an agreement in which the defendant would be held without bail until he had satisfied two conditions.

Piri will be required to surrender all if his passports and he will also be required to surrender all of his firearms, apparently housed at his homes in Vermont and Florida.

At that point he will be released on bail. Further conditions include residing at his home on Bahama Swallow Way in Naples and keep a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. He must also get prior court approval for staying anywhere else during his curfew. In addition, Piri must not “buy, have or use any firearms or dangerous/deadly weapons” nor have contact or abuse or harass members of the Fonseca-Rivera family.

Deputy State’s Attorney Steve Brown confirmed the arrangement for Judge Treadwell.

The number of firearms that Piri owns is of issue because the apparent numerous purchases he made over a two-year period had caught the attention of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. At the time of Fonseca-Rivera’s killing, Piri had also kept a number of those firearms at his home in Connecticut, where he lived and worked prior to moving to Florida this past March.

Piri was arrested in Florida on Thursday, Dec. 16 and extradited to Vermont on Dec. 23. The arrest rose out of a more than two-year investigation by the Vermont State Police following Fonseca-Rivera’s murder on Nov. 1, 2019. Fonseca-Rivera was a delivery driver working for Katsiroubas Bros., a Boston-based wholesale fruit and vegetable company. He was returning home to the Boston area after making stops in Vermont when he was shot.

While to shooting happened in Windham County, the arraignment was conducted by Treadwell at the Windsor County Superior Court in White River Junction because Windham and Windsor counties have an arrangement to alternate weeks on their “in custody” defendants according to a Windham Superior Court official.

According to information filed by the State’s Attorney’s office along with the affidavit of probable cause, the penalty for second degree murder is “imprisoned for life with a presumptive minimum term of 20 years.”

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