A 24-year-old man facing two counts of attempted murder will
have spent more than three years in jail before he stands trial for
his alleged crimes.
A 24-year-old man facing two counts of attempted murder will have spent more than three years in jail before he stands trial for his alleged crimes.
Tomas Martinez Romero was the second man arrested on suspicion of a shooting on Stoney Court in March 2007. Initially arrested in May 2007 for the grisly murder of a Gilroy man on charges that were later dropped, Martinez Romero was in the process of being deported when authorities hauled him off a bus headed to Mexico and charged him with the Stoney Court shooting. Twenty-one at the time, he has been in jail since.
His charges carry a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
Police believe Martinez Romero is the man who fired about 10 rounds into a white Toyota parked outside the Stoney Court Apartments – located just south of San Ysidro Park and west of U.S. 101 in east Gilroy – the evening of March 27, 2007. The car contained five males, including the brother of one of Martinez Romero’s acquaintances, police said.
The two brothers – one who was seated in the white Toyota and sustained a gunshot wound and one who police believe was in the same car that Martinez Romero got out of prior to the shooting – had an argument in the parking lot minutes before the shooting occurred, according to police reports and testimony given by Gilroy police. After the argument, the brothers retreated to their respective cars – the white Toyota occupied by the victims and an older model brown Cadillac – police said.
The brown Cadillac Martinez Romero rode in with one of the brothers began to leave the apartment’s parking lot before Martinez Romero told the driver to stop, saying he had to urinate, according to police testimony. Martinez Romero got out of the car and disappeared. While Martinez Romero was gone, gunshots rang out and Martinez Romero hurried back to the car, telling the driver to step on it because he had heard shots fired, police said.
Two of the Toyota’s occupants – the brother of Martinez Romero’s acquaintance and a juvenile who was 14 at the time of the shooting – were wounded.
Martinez Romero’s trial is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. July 6 in Department 110 at the South County Courthouse in Morgan Hill. The proceedings will begin with pretrial motions and jury selection, said Amy Cornell, a spokeswoman with the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors estimated the trial will last two weeks.
