By Tobias Salinger

May 25, 2016 - An Ohio man gunned down a longtime coal executive in a cemetery while the businessman was decorating his wife’s grave for Memorial Day, police said.

Anthony Arriaga, 20, was arrested early Tuesday on a first-degree murder warrant, a day after investigators found the body of Bennett Hatfield near the Mountain View Memory Gardens in southern West Virginia, said Mingo County Sheriff James Smith.

Another 20-year-old man, Ricky Dean Peterson, was arrested Monday night on charges he lied to investigators about whether he knew anything about the killing. State troopers said Arriaga stopped at Peterson’s home while fleeing the murder scene.

Hatfield, 59, was CEO of International Coal Group during the deadly 2006 Sago Mine explosion and stepped down in 2015 as president and CEO of Patriot Coal just before the company filed for bankruptcy protection for a second time.

He also worked in management jobs with Arch Coal and Massey Energy, received an appointment last June to the board of St. Louis coal producer Foresight Energy and served on the board of the West Virginia Coal Association.

“Ben Hatfield was well known, not just for his many accomplishments within the industry, but also as a mentor to so many of us,” Kentucky Coal Association President Bill Bissett said. “His kindness and compassion were legendary, as was his intellect and ability. His belief in those around him often succeeded our belief in ourselves, which made you work that much harder to accomplish the task at hand.”

Investigators were still searching for a reason Tuesday afternoon why Arriaga would have wanted to kill Hatfield, Smith told the Charleston Gazette-Mail. A man who lives near the cemetery told detectives Arriaga came to his house wearing only his underwear after the shooting Sunday, Smith said.

“Once he heard what was going on, he let us know he gave this subject a ride to Wayne County," Smith said. “We were totally lost. Him catching that ride helped us.”

Arriaga said he had fallen in the river and paid the man $45 to take him to a drug store near West Virginia’s western border with Kentucky and Ohio, according to Smith. Detectives believe he told Peterson about the killing before moving on to the relative’s house in Ohio where Arriaga was captured Tuesday.

Peterson told police he didn’t know anything about the cemetery slaying, yet two other people who lived there said Arriaga had been there talking about gunning down Hatfield, according to court documents obtained by the Gazette-Mail. He faces charges of obstruction, providing false information and being an accessory after the fact.

Hatfield had been preparing the graves of his wife and other family members for the upcoming holiday the day he was killed, police told WSAZ-TV. His wife of 25 years, Debbie, died of breast cancer in 2009, and Hatfield donated a sculpture in her memory to a Charleston hospital in October.

The Sago Mine explosion killed 12 coal miners in January 2006. Hatfield choked up at a press conference explaining a miscommunication that led their family members to think for hours that the workers had survived the methane blast.

“In the process of being cautious, we allowed the jubilation to go on longer than it should have,” Hatfield said.