Rey Rivera was a happy man.
At least that what?s people close to him told The Examiner just days after his body was found in a second-floor office of The Belvedere.
As the investigation continues into the circumstances surrounding his death, police officials indicate that investigators are “leaning towards suicide.” But people who knew the 32-year-old former editor and aspiring documentary maker said he seemed happy, not suicidal.
Suicide “never came up,” said a friend who did not wish to be identified. Friends said that the tall, handsome man was “happy-go lucky” and did not exhibit signs of depression.
Rivera?s body was found Wednesday in an empty second-floor office space that was once occupied by a church in The Belvedere, a historic Baltimore condominium and restaurant complex. His body, found after relatives apparently discovered the hole in the second-floor ceiling from atop an adjacent parking garage, had been there long enough to cause a “bad smell,” employees at the hotel told The Examiner.
The position of his body and the hole in the roof indicate that he jumped from the Belvedere hotel, but employees familiar with the building said the distance of the hole in the roof from the hotel suggest otherwise.
“Someone would have had to throw him off the ceiling for him to land that far out,” an employee who did not wish to be identified told The Examiner Wednesday.
Rivera, who was missing since May 16, was last seen leaving his house wearing sandals, shorts and a pullover jacket. Relatives and friends mounted an intensive search for Rivera, discovering his car in a parking lot adjacent to The Belvedere on Monday afternoon.
An e-mail that circulated to the media two days before his body was discovered reveals that Rivera did not take any of his personal belongings when heleft the house, nor did he wear his removable braces, which the e-mail said he “wears religiously.” He also did not take his banks cards or any “personal possessions,” the e-mail said.
Video cameras of the parking lot where Rivera?s car was found are owned by Truffles, a Mount Vernon catering company, and are now being reviewed by police.
