Tomas Martinez Romero has been sitting in county jail for 18
months, waiting for his attempted murder case to go to preliminary
hearing. Almost two years to the day after police said he walked up
to a car with five occupants and opened fire, a judge will hear his
case.
Tomas Martinez Romero has been sitting in county jail for 18 months, waiting for his attempted murder case to go to preliminary hearing. Almost two years to the day after police said he walked up to a car with five occupants and opened fire, a judge will hear his case.
Several conflicts of interests with defense attorneys and a language barrier has delayed Martinez Romero’s case for months.
After the public defender’s office and the alternate defender’s office cited conflicts of interest in representing Martinez Romero, the case was handed off to a third office for representation, said Deputy District Attorney Danny Carr.
On the night of March 27, 2007, Martinez Romero walked up to a car at Stoney Court Apartments in east Gilroy with five occupants and fired almost 10 rounds, injuring two people, police said. He faces two counts of attempted murder.
Martinez Romero was originally arrested in connection with a grisly downtown stabbing *– the city’s only murder in 2007. However, the charges were dropped and he was released from custody. An illegal alien, Martinez Romero was almost deported but police removed him from a bus at the last moment to serve him with the new charges in late July 2007.
Superior Court Judge Charles Hayden scheduled Martinez Romero’s preliminary hearing 9 a.m. March 26 in Department 92 of the South County Courthouse in San Martin. Carr requested two Spanish translators for the hearing and said he expects the proceedings to last about a day.
