A farmer in Iowa who employed Cristhian Rivera said he is shocked his former worker was charged in the killing of college student Mollie Tibbetts.
“Our employee is not who he said he was,” Dane Lang said at a news conference at the farm Wednesday, according to The Associated Press. “This was shocking to us.”
{mosads}Rivera’s former employer said the suspect presented himself as a legal U.S. resident and he was a solid worker on the family dairy farm.
“This individual was considered to be an employee in good standing,” Lang said. “What I mean by this is that he came to work every day, was on time, and got along with his coworkers.”
Lang insisted that Rivera still appeared normal after Tibbetts’s disappearance on July 18.
Lang said he hired Rivera in 2014 and that the man showed him an out-of-state government-issued photo identification and a matching Social Security card, which he then ran through the Social Security Administration’s employment-verification system.
The system said Rivera’s documents checked out, Lang told the press.
“We screen every applicant through the Social Security Administration’s Social Security number verification service,” Lang said. “The information [for Rivera] came back verified.”
“I want you to know that all of us are saddened by the tragic death of Mollie and the realization that one of our coworkers was involved,” Land said.
“This is tragic. Mollie’s death is tragic. Everyone in our community wishes this hadn’t happened.”
Rivera was charged with the murder of Tibbetts, a 20-year-old college student, Tuesday.
His suspected involvement in her death has made him a talking point in the ongoing national debate over American immigration laws.
Iowa Senators Chuck Grassley (R) and Joni Ernst (R) said in a statement Tuesday that U.S. immigration laws were culpable in Tibbetts’s death.
Similarly, the White House released a video of families who were “permanently separated” when a family member died at the hands of an illegal immigrant, which included Tibbetts. And President Trump said at a rally in West Virginia on Tuesday that the killing “should have never happened.”
Rivera’s attorney Allen Richards has denied that his client was in the country illegally and called Trump “sad and sorry” for weighing in on the matter.
However, Richards also acknowledged that Rivera received his paycheck under a different name and that he was uncertain of his immigration status, according to The Associated Press.