When Anaheim police officers arrived at Aaron Romo’s door in March 2023, they knocked on the door and announced their arrival. They were summoned after a security guard saw the muscular Romo violently pulling his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Mirelle Mateus, 24, into his apartment. She kept screaming for help.
Mateus has an active restraining order against Romo, who faces felony charges for allegedly throwing her over a patio railing four months ago. Officers heard muffled sounds inside the apartment, but no one answered the door. They drove away soon after, and Mateus was later found dead in Romo’s bathroom, beaten and strangled.
Details about the La Palma woman’s last night alive and the police’s botched response to her calls for help emerged this month during the trial of Romo, who was convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder in Orange County Superior Court. Sin, judgment culminates.
On the night of March 16, 2023, Romo — who was portrayed in his trial as a hard-partying lothario who lifted weights and drank heavily — went to an Orange County bar, where he was slapped by a woman he had insulted. He was slapped in the face, kicked out by security guards, and beaten.
He called Matthäus and asked him to drive him home. Despite a judge ordering him not to contact her, he called her 616 times in the last month.
“Stop calling me, stop trying to be in my life,” she texted him. “I don’t want to be involved in anything with you. Figure out your own life…I’m tired of helping you at my expense. Now, for the first time in your life, you’re an adult. No Contact means no contact.
But the night after the bar fight, she answered his phone and came to pick him up. She drove him to his home in an apartment on the edge of Union Street, where security guard Rudy Ruelas called 911 to say Mateus needed help.
Aaron Romo, right, listens to Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Mark Burney’s opening statement during Romo’s murder trial earlier this month
(Alan J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Ruelas said he saw her standing on Romo’s patio and Romo roughly pulled her into his apartment.
“There was a man beating his girlfriend,” Ruelas told the dispatcher. “She was screaming for help and now she’s quiet.” Seconds later, he said: “She screamed again…”
Two Anaheim police officers arrived within minutes and announced their arrival outside Romo’s door. One of the officers, Rapheal Borjon, testified at the trial that he put his ear to the wall and heard what he thought was muffled conversations inside. He said they knocked for five minutes but got no response.
“We didn’t hear any violent screams,” Beaujon testified. “We discussed whether there was an emergency” to force entry into the apartment. They decided not to.
Bohon said a second security guard showed up and explained he saw Matthäus on the terrace. Borjon said he misinterpreted that to mean the guard had just seen her there, unrestrained, giving the impression that she was not in immediate danger.
“The officers did not believe this was an emergency,” prosecutor Mark Burney told jurors at Romo’s trial. “It’s unfortunate.”
Burney said there were “a lot of things we wished had happened” in the case, including that police kicked down Romo’s door.
Mateus’ family is suing the Orange County and Anaheim police departments for negligence, claiming officers should have known Romo was arrested beforehand and had a restraining order against him. Medical examiners determined Romo killed her a half-hour after police left, the lawsuit states.
According to trial testimony, after strangling her, Romo drove to the Temecula townhouse of another woman he had dated, Stephanie Rodriguez, who told police he admitted this murder.
Defense attorney Stacey Serna told jurors that Romo didn’t believe he was capable of killing because “he just loved Mireille so much.” She told jurors that if they concluded that Romo killed her, that wouldn’t be the case. Not the premeditation required for first degree murder.
“The situation is much more complicated,” Sena said, suggesting that jurors should consider “drunken rage fueled by jealousy, coupled with severe head injuries.” She said Romo suffered a head injury after being knocked unconscious during a bar fight hours earlier.
Prosecutor Burney said Mateus and Romo “appeared to be a very attractive, happy couple on the outside” but that privately Romo was possessive and violent, fitting a long-standing pattern.
Burney listed a list of women he claimed Romo had assaulted and intimidated. Burney said Romo had frightened five of them enough that they issued restraining orders against him. Some spoke of being choked, punched and followed.
Aaron Romo, right, is escorted out of the courtroom by an Orange County Sheriff’s deputy.
(Alan J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“That’s who he is,” Bernie said. “This is not a concussion. … He’s been abusing women for 15 years. Now we’re going to say it’s because he got into a bar fight?
Romo, 37, ran a family auto upholstery business before his arrest. In his defence, he said he was too drunk the night Mateus died and did not remember her being in his apartment. He was left with a “foggy brain” from a bar fight.
“We love each other,” he said, describing their relationship as an “emotional roller coaster.”
He admitted that he once broke Mateus’ cell phone because he was jealous that she was talking to another man. “We were arguing and I was drunk and I broke her phone.”
Prosecutors showed him a photo of Mateus taken in late 2022 that showed her with dark circles under her eyes.
“I couldn’t tell you whether I gave her that black eye,” Romo said.
“Did she hit herself?” the prosecutor asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“It was you who caused that black eye, wasn’t it, Mr. Romo?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Romo faces 25 years to life in prison and will be sentenced on June 24 by Orange County Superior Court Judge Gary Parr.
