Nearly a year ago, on a Friday night, 14-year-old Tara Romero and a group of friends ate pizza and cake as they celebrated a birthday at a Morgan Hill restaurant.
After the party, Romero and three others walked to Cosmo and Del Monte avenues to wait for a ride home. But Romero never made it home, and three of her friends ended up in the hospital instead after a car of five men allegedly drove by the intersection and opened fire at the crowd – mistakenly targeting the teens in an apparent gang-related attack.
Romero was pronounced dead when paramedics arrived to the scene of the Nov. 4, 2011 shooting, police said. Her friends who were waiting with her – Alicia Sotelo, 15, Rosa Castaneda, 14, and Chris Loredo, 16 – were injured by the gunfire and transported to area hospitals.
On Sunday, the one-year anniversary of the murder, Romero’s friends and family will invite the community to celebrate a life cut short at the Morgan Hill Community and Cultural Center.
Romero’s mother, Annette Nevarez, said Thursday she is doing “a lot better” since she lost her daughter,
“In the beginning I thought I wasn’t going to make it because she was my life,” said Nevarez. “She has sent angels to me,” she added, referring to a core group of friends who include the mothers of some of Romero’s friends who have supported her.
“She is the one who keeps me going. If it weren’t for my daughter telling me, ‘Mommy, you can do it,’ I would not have survived,” she said.
One year after the shooting, the five men accused of killing Romero and attempting to kill her friends remain in jail awaiting trial. The local police department has gained resources and collaborated with other agencies to combat gang-related violence. The survivors continue to heal physically, emotionally and mentally.
This summer, Nevarez founded the nonprofit “Everyone’s Child, the Tara Romero Youth Empowerment Project” in her daughter’s memory. The nonprofit, which is hosting the anniversary event Sunday, was created to raise money for a public art project in honor of Romero and other fallen teens in the community. The nonprofit also works to raise money, on an ongoing basis, for youth scholarships, nonprofit youth organizations and other local groups that share the new nonprofit’s vision.
The event Sunday will feature live entertainment, local community speakers including Mayor Steve Tate, and a balloon release.
Sotelo and her family plan to attend the memorial event, even though she is recovering from another surgery since the attack. She underwent surgery three weeks ago on the gunshot wound that left her femur broken in half, according to her sister Amanda Valencia. Doctors had to remove a metal pin that held the bone together while it healed, and they performed plastic surgery on the scar left by the bullet.
It was the sixth surgery Sotelo has had on the injury she suffered in the shooting, her mother Jodie Arriaga said. She will continue to go through physical therapy until she fully recovers her ability to walk. She now walks with a limp, but couldn’t be on her feet at all for the first three months after she was shot. The bone itself is fully healed.
The leg injury was particularly debilitating for Sotelo because she played softball in a fast-pitch league and began playing the sport at 6 years old, Sotelo said on the phone Thursday.
Sotelo attended Sobrato High School at the time of the shooting, but has since transferred to a high school in San Jose.
Mentally and emotionally, she continues to struggle with the trauma of witnessing her friend’s death and suffering a gunshot wound herself, but her mother said she has grown stronger in the past year.
“Throughout this whole year it’s been up and down,” Arriaga said. “It’s made her a stronger little girl. She wants to get back on her feet, get back into softball, and get her life back together.”
Castaneda was shot in the stomach in the Nov. 4 shooting, and was comatose in critical condition for several days. She suffered a double tragedy, as her mother died of liver failure while Castaneda was in a coma.
Her family could not be reached, but in May they said she was “getting back to normal,” going back to school and hanging out with her friends at the mall.
Loredo also could not be contacted before press time, but his injuries from the shooting were less serious. He was shot in the leg and released from the hospital a few days after the incident.
Police identified five suspects in the shooting moments after it happened, and arrested them within hours. Esmeling Bahena, 18 of Morgan Hill; Ricardo Diaz, 19 of Morgan Hill; Fernando Mateo Lopez, 20 of Gilroy; Primitivo Hernandez, 23 of San Jose; and Ramon Gutierrez, 17 of Morgan Hill, were arrested at a residence on Barnell Avenue, about a mile from where the shooting happened outside the Village Avante apartments.
They remain in Santa Clara County Jail on murder and attempted murder charges, with enhancements for committing the crime to benefit an illegal street gang. Police think the suspects mistakenly targeted the victims, who were not affiliated with any gang activity.
The suspects’ next court date is Nov. 15 at the San Jose Hall of Justice, where the court will schedule a preliminary hearing, according to Santa Clara County deputy district attorney Peter Waite.
It is normal for a case such as this one to languish for at least a year before the suspects make it to trial or a judgment, Waite said.
“In this case, because it’s five defendants, multiple victims, the publicity, and gang enhancements, it’s going to take even longer,” Waite said. “That makes it a very slow case to process with a lot of police reports, and a lot of investigation.”
While Morgan Hill police haven’t enacted any new programs or extra patrols specifically in response to Romero’s murder, they have benefited from a number of programs and grants whose purpose is to combat gang-related crime in the last year, Chief David Swing said.
The cities of Morgan Hill and Gilroy jointly acquired state funding earlier this year from the CalGRIP initiative which takes a multi-faceted approach to prevent gang violence, Swing said. Last month, that program helped police arrest 13 suspects – most of them gang members – in a probation and parole sweep. Swing also commended Gilroy police for their work in completing some operations that were under way before last year’s drive-by shooting.
Local agencies have also formed the South County Youth Task Force since Romero’s death, helping to guide at-risk children away from violence and crime, Swing added.
And just the fact that police arrested the five suspected shooters so soon after the drive-by had a profound effect, and not just because the arrests prevented future violence, Swing added.
“It did so much to help people feel safe shortly after the incident occurred,” Swing said.
A memorial of the one-year anniversary of the murder of Tara Romero and a celebration of a life cut short will take place at the Morgan Hill Community and Cultural Center, Hiram Morgan Hill room 5 to 8 p.m. Sunday. The event will feature entertainment, local speakers, and a balloon release. The community center is located at 17000 Monterey Road.
