Wanted killer charged in DeBary shooting death

A man who served 26 years for killing a store owner in New York fled to DeBary after violating his parole and on Sunday shot the friend helping him hide, Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said.

Julio Cesar Rivera, 48, was arrested shortly after the 7:15 p.m. shooting that left a 40-year-old Roberto Ovalle dead from a 9 mm bullet wound to the back of the head, investigators said.

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Rivera was charged with first-degree murder and the violation of parole out of New York. On Monday afternoon, a judge ordered Rivera held without bail at his first appearance at the Volusia County Branch Jail.

Chitwood said Ovalle, his girlfriend and Rivera were in a storage facility converted into an apartment at 333 E. Highbanks Road smoking marijuana when for no apparent reason Rivera shot his friend.

“According to the witness there was no argument,” Chitwood said. “They were speaking in Spanish to one another mostly, she doesn’t know what they were saying, all she knows is he said ’I want to show you my new toy’ at which point he circles behind our victim and shoots him once in the back of the head killing him.”

Investigators said Ovalle was Rivera’s childhood friend and associate.

"The victim’s girlfriend told deputies she witnessed the shooting," said sheriff’s spokesman Andrew Gant said, "and that Rivera had shot her boyfriend in the head while the three of them were sitting inside the storage unit."

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The woman told deputies she immediately fled but Rivera followed her to her vehicle and accompanied her back to the victim's home, "saying he would protect her and her children," Gant said.

She took Rivera’s gun from him and went to gather her children, Gant said. After Rivera left, she started running toward a friend's home when she was intercepted by responding deputies, Gant said. When Rivera arrived back at the storage unit, he was arrested by deputies responding to the scene.

Rivera was the subject of an active arrest warrant for parole violation in relation to a previous murder conviction in New York, Chitwood said.

According to Chitwood, on Dec. 12, 1993, Rivera went into a store in the Bronx and tried to steal a medallion.

The store owner confronted Rivera, who pulled out a handgun and shoots the businessman in front of his 12-year-old and 15-year-old children, Chitwood said.

New York police chased Rivera into an apartment complex where he entered a home and held hostage a father, mother and their six children, the sheriff said.

“As police try to enter the apartment he fires shots at them. After hours and and hours of negotiations he allows the family to go and then shoots himself,” Chitwood said.

Rivera spent more than two decades in prison and was paroled in 2019. He violated parole and came to Florida in October, where his childhood friend hid him in a storage facility, Chitwood said.

"He gets paroled and commits violation that drives him here to Florida where he hides out to where he then kills for no apparent reason, the friend helping him hide,“ Chitwood said.

There was also a "significant amount of marijuana" recovered from the storage unit, about 20 vacuum-sealed bags, along with an unknown white powder and unknown brown substance, Gant said.

Chitwood said Ovalle was well known to Volusia sheriff’s narcotics agents. Court records show Ovalle was arrested multiple times for drug offenses and served 10 years in prison on charges of trafficking drugs.

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