Death in Pomona: Inside a gang killing

This story is part of a three-story package about Roberta Romero's killing that ran on Aug. 15. A sidebar on Ralph Flores' murder case can be read here. A sidebar on witness intimidation can be read here.

Pictured: The Pomona street where Roberta Romero was killed.

During the ride that ended in her death, Roberta Romero tried to reason with the two gang members who forced her into their car.

She apologized and said she'd made a mistake when she testified against Ralph Flores, a high-ranking Azusa 13 gang member who was convicted of four murders two years ago and sentenced to death.

Romero, a one-time associate of the gang, said she wasn't the only person from her Azusa neighborhood who testified against Flores, nicknamed "Swifty," an enforcer for the gang who police described as the right-hand man of one of the group's leaders.

Romero's captors tried to reassure her. "They just said they are going to take her to talk to someone," said an eyewitness to Romero's killing who was in the car and later testified in court.

When the group reached Bellevue Avenue and Glenpark Street in Pomona, Rodney Perez parked the car. The L-shaped intersection has no streetlights, and it was dark when the group arrived at about 5 a.m. on May 11, 2009.

Romero lit a cigarette. Before she could finish it, Perez opened his door, walked around the car and opened Romero's door.

Perez told Romero to get out of the car. When she refused, Perez grabbed her arm and pulled her out, according to the eyewitness, one of Romero's relatives.

They walked behind the car, and the other alleged gang member, Ramiro Alvarez, got out of the car and followed them.

Romero knelt in the road and pleaded for her life.

Mark Pineda, who lives down the street, said another neighbor overheard Perez and Romero's conversation.

Romero was apologizing and Perez sounded agitated. The neighbor who overheard the conversation at first thought it was a lovers' quarrel, Pineda said.

"She kept pleading," Pineda said. "You could hear her pleading."

The eyewitness, whose identity is being withheld for fear of gang retaliation, said she saw Perez shoot Romero twice with a handgun.

When police arrived at the intersection, Romero, 24, was dead.

She had fallen to her side, with her body still positioned in a kneel. Pineda said he saw a bullet wound just above Romero's left eyebrow.

Violence against 'rats'

Street gangs such as Azusa 13 often retaliate violently against people they view as "rats" for cooperating for law enforcement - particularly if the informants are members or associates of the gang, according to police and prosecutors.

"If you're a gang member of if you're just anybody, being a rat or snitch on a gang is one of those things you don't do," said Deputy District Attorney Ian Phan, who prosecuted Flores and is now prosecuting Romero's accused killers.

"And if they believe you've snitched on somebody or that you're ratted out on somebody, you pay the ultimate price."

Romero, an Azusa native, was an associate of Azusa 13 and has very strong ties to the gang, Azusa police Lt. Michael Bertelsen testified at a May preliminary hearing in Romero's killing.

Bertelsen said Romero has family members from the gang and has had children with members of the gang.

As an associate, Romero and others in her position are entrusted to remain silent about crimes committed by the gang, Bertelsen said.

"They trust you," he said. "They take you out and they commit crimes with you and they expect that you are not going to break that code and provide information."

Bertelsen identified Flores, 28, as a "respected member within the gang." His mentor is the gang's "key holder" - the person who runs the gang in the neighborhood.

Flores and the key holder, Santiago Rios, known as "Chico," have matching "Azusa" tattoos above their upper lips.

"I've been told that 'Swifty' was 'Chico's' right-hand man," Bertelsen said. "He would go out and commit crimes on his behalf at his direction."

In retaliating against gang members or associates labeled as rats, gangs are often aided by the easy access they have to their victims in tight-knit communities, Bertelsen said.

"They frequently kill people that they know," he said. "It can be easier to do it. You know somebody, you know who their family is, you can contact them.

"They feel more comfortable around you and you don't have to drive them off kicking and screaming. You can in essence walk up to them and do what you've been tasked to do."

Fenise Luna killing

The killing that Romero witnessed and later testified to occurred on Dec. 29, 2004 in Azusa.

Anthony Almarez, a member of the Azusa 13 gang, faced criminal charges, and the gang needed money to pay for a lawyer.

Flores and other gang members decided they would try to coerce a gang associate named Fenise Luna to sign over the pink slip to her car to raise money to pay for a lawyer.

Romero was with a group of gang members - including Flores - on the night Luna, 28, was tortured and killed after she refused to sign over title to her car, a 1999 Ford Expedition.

According to an appellate court summary of Luna's killing, Luna met with her drug dealer, Flores, and a third man, Steven Zamora, hoping to buy $40 worth of methamphetamine.

While meeting with the three men in Zamora's garage on Duell Street near Azusa High School, Zamora and Flores attacked her.

While they were inside the garage, Romero waited outside in a parked car. Romero later testified that she didn't know what the men planned to do to Luna.

The first strike against Luna came when Zamora pressed a Taser to her neck. The weapon malfunctioned and didn't discharge, so Zamora punched Luna in the face, according to the case summary.

She fell to the ground, hit her head on the pavement and began bleeding.

According to the case summary, Flores then punched Luna in the face several times. He retrieved a rope and strangled Luna, then hung her from a beam in the garage.

After Luna was dead, the men hog-tied her arms and legs behind her back, wrapped her in a white sheet and loaded her into the trunk of her car.

Romero testified that she saw Flores and Zamora load Luna's body into the car. She followed the men when they parked Luna's car a half-mile away, then gave them a ride home.

Romero's testimony helped convict Flores and Zamora. Flores was sentenced to death, and Zamora received a prison sentence of 85 years to life, Phan said.

Under cross-examination from one of the men's attorneys during a 2006 preliminary hearing, Romero said she shared her story with detectives after they told her she could be charged as an accessory to Luna's killing.

Phan said he believes part of Romero's motivation for cooperating with authorities was that she felt it was the right thing to do.

"I think she did the right thing," Phan said. "Personally I think that she's a good person, and she saw what she saw, and she came forward and testified to the truth."

The actions of another witness in Flores' case underscore the gang's ability to intimidate witnesses.

The witness called by prosecutors immediately following Romero's testimony in Flores' preliminary hearing was a one-time gang associate who earlier told police about a conversation he had with Zamora in which Zamora detailed Luna's killing, according to a transcript of the hearing.

But when the man took the witness stand, his response to every question was the same: he could not remember.

He said he couldn't remember talking to Zamora or talking to a detective. Every response was, "No."

Romero tracked down

After Romero cooperated with authorities in Flores' case, she was relocated as part of a witness-protection program, according to Phan and police.

Phan said that in the program, witnesses are relocated to an apartment outside their former neighborhoods, and are provided with money for first and last month's rent as well as money for expenses.

Romero's alleged killers were able to find her through her family. One of her relatives was dating Ramiro Alvarez at the time of Romero's death.

The following account of Romero's death comes from her relative's testimony in a May preliminary hearing. Her identity is being withheld for fear of retaliation.

The morning of the killing, Alvarez, Perez and Romero's relative were sitting outside the relative's home in West Covina drinking alcohol. Perez asked to borrow the woman's cell phone to contact Romero.

He sent Romero a text message at 4:14 a.m. about her 7-year-old son, who was then asleep at her family member's home, according to a court declaration written by Phan.

"I need 2 pick u up asap jr is sick," the message said, according to Phan.

Perez told Romero that her son - who wasn't actually sick - needed to be taken to a hospital. Romero agreed to be picked up at a friend's house in West Covina to go the hospital with her son.

While Perez and the others were drinking outside at the home, Perez asked Romero's relative if he could go inside to use the restroom.

When he rejoined the group, he was carrying Romero's son, who was asleep and wrapped in a blanket.

Perez put the boy in the front passenger seat of his car. Alvarez and Romero's relative sat in the back seat as the group left to pick up Romero.

When they arrived at Romero's friend's house, Romero asked her relative what was wrong with her son. After her relative told her nothing was wrong with her son, Perez told her to get in the car.

"Rodney told her that if she wanted to see her baby, she needed to go with him," the relative testified at the preliminary hearing.

Romero got in the car and sat in the back seat with Alvarez and her relative. Her son was still asleep in the front seat.

Perez drove back to the relative's house and took the boy out of the car. As he walked toward the house carrying the child, Romero's relative walked alongside him.

"I asked Rodney what was going to happen or whatever with my sister and he said that he was just going to take her to talk to someone," the woman testified.

When the group resumed driving, Romero began pleading with Perez and Alvarez. Perez told her they were taking her to talk to someone.

The group drove for about a half-hour before they came to a dark commercial area. There was a police car or private security vehicle in the area, so they left.

The group proceeded to the intersection in Pomona where Romero was killed. Before Perez shot Romero, among the woman's final pleas were that she not be killed in front of her relative.

When Perez shot Romero, her family member ran from the car toward Romero. Perez and Alvarez called her back, and she complied. As the group sped south on Bellevue, Romero's relative was inconsolable. Alvarez, who was crying, apologized to her.

"(Perez) said that he was sorry and he said that if I want I could hit him," the woman said.
Alvarez told Perez that what they'd done was wrong. Perez's responded, according to the woman, by alluding to Flores' death sentence.

"He said he knows, but that the homie's going to die so they have to do it," the woman said.
The group drove to a home in Fontana where Alvarez's relatives live.

Alvarez's cousin later told a police officer that Alvarez was fidgety and pacing back and forth when he arrived and later began packing a duffel bag with clothing.

Alvarez's cousin, Alejandro Flores, asked him if he'd done something wrong. Alvarez ignored him, according to testimony from Pomona police Officer Jamie Martinez.

"Based on the brother's nervous action this led Alenajdro to ask him just straight out, 'Did you kill someone?" the officer said.

"Don't worry about it," Alvarez responded, according to the officer. "I just got to get out of here."
Azusa police, acting on a tip in Romero's killing, had staked out the home in Fontana. When Perez and the others left, a detective alerted Fontana police.

Officers tried to pull over the group on the 10 Freeway, and Perez drove off at speeds of 130 to 140 mph, with Alvarez throwing two guns from the car. All three of the occupants were arrested after they exited the freeway.

After Romero was killed, her family made a memorial at the intersection of Bellevue and Glenpark, with candles and pictures of Romero.

Pineda, the man who lives nearby, recalled seeing family members grieving at the site.
"It was just so heartbreaking to see," he said.

Possible death penalty

Perez and Alvarez are eligible for the death penalty, but prosecutors haven't decided whether to pursue it.

Phan said the decision to pursue the death penalty will be made by a committee of Los Angeles County deputy district attorneys, with a decision likely to be made prior to Perez and Alvarez's next court date on Oct. 18.

Romero's killing is not the first time Perez, 30, has been implicated in a gang shooting.

An Azusa police lieutenant testified in the May preliminary hearing that Perez served a prison sentence for the 2000 shooting in Azusa of a black preacher - a stranger to the gang who was using a pay phone.

The shooting was part of a pattern of violence by Azusa 13 gang members against black people in Azusa, police and prosecutors say.

Alvarez, 26, has identified himself as an Azusa 13 member in contacts with Azusa police, Bertelsen testified.

Several of Alvarez's family members attended a hearing last month in Perez and Alvarez's case in Pomona Superior Court.

In a hallway outside the courtroom, Alvarez's relatives called him a good person and said he changed after spending several years in custody.

His mother, who declined to give her name, said Alvarez, who attended Slauson Middle School and Azusa High School, has been in and out of custody since he was 16.

"So everything he is now, he learned from being in there," she said. "What he is now - in there, in prison, they're the ones that changed him."

Alvarez's mother said she visited her son in jail after his arrest in Romero's killing, and he told her he was innocent.

"I believe him," she said. "We talked, and I believe him."

Alvarez's aunt, who asked to be identified by her first name, Ester, said: "All I can say about my nephew is I love him and he's a good man."

Romero's family members declined to comment to a reporter at the hearing.