A state Parole Board on Wednesday denied parole for a 48-year-old Rohnert Park man convicted in 2012 for assaulting his wife in a scheme to frame his ex-girlfriend and get her deported.
Then, after Jose Pablo Romero’s wife refused to testify as part of the scheme, he used a boxcutter to carve an X on her back, leaving her to bleed in a field. But she survived and testified against him at trial.
With the Board’s joint decision, Romero, a previously convicted felon who is serving a life sentence in state prison for aggravated mayhem, was denied parole for a term of three years, District Attorney Krishna Abrams said in a press statement.
Abrams, who attended the parole hearing, said in the statement that Romero “turned the life of a 19-year-old teenage girl completely upside down” with the crimes.
She characterized the victim as “young, impressionable, and in love,” having met Romero just after turning 19 and married him within weeks.
He then assaulted the victim for weeks, by punching her, cutting her hair, and stabbing her in the abdomen. The victim’s injuries required her to be hospitalized and undergo emergency surgery. Throughout her ordeal, Romero told her to lie to police and implicate his ex- girlfriend as her assailant.
When the initial assaults did not result in his ex-girlfriend’s arrest, Romero “became irate and decided he needed to inflict even greater injury to the victim,” Abrams wrote in the statement.
His wife pleaded with him to abandon this plan; however, he remained determined.
“He drove her around in her car for hours looking for a place with no cameras and no witnesses,” Abrams added. “Once they reached a dark, secluded area, he parked her car and told her to get out. When the victim attempted to flee, she was chased down by Romero and an accomplice.”
The woman was then violently assaulted, kicked, and beaten, the attack culminating with Romero using a boxcutter to carve an X on her back, starting at her shoulders and stretching down to her waistline. He and the accomplice then fled on foot and left the victim bleeding in a field.
Fortunately, the victim survived the attack, “but not without 100 staples and a lifelong scar that serves as a daily reminder of what she endured,” Abrams said.
“This was one of the most bizarre and disturbing cases I have ever handled in my entire career,” she said, adding that the woman endured heinous, callous, and horrific violent acts, and “courageously testified at the jury trial.”
The criminal complaint was filed Aug. 19, 2011, Romero was convicted on May 31, 2012, and sentenced to prison on Sept. 17, 2014.
And although many years have gone by, “these acts still continue to haunt her … and she still deals with the aftermath of this crime and realizes it will be with her forever,” wrote Abrams.
After hearing from Romero and counsel, the Parole Board panel denied is request for parole, finding that he currently “poses an unreasonable risk to the community should he be released at this time,” she wrote in the statement.
Abrams, an elected official who is Solano County’s chief law enforcement officer, urges anyone who has been — or knows someone who has been — a victim of domestic violence and needs the help of an advocate, to call (707) 784-6827.