Woman, shot in face and left for dead, survives to testify

By Cara McCoy

Friday, March 19, 2010 | 2:05 a.m.

Roberta Romero struggles to maintain her composure as she describes what she’s been through in the past few months.

Her husband, Julio, was shot dead during a violent home invasion in January. And as he lay bleeding in a bedroom, the intruder forced her into a closet, where he shot her in the face and left her for dead.

After multiple surgeries and a long stint in the hospital, Roberta Romero survived.

On Thursday, she took the witness stand to tell a judge about what happened the night her life changed forever.

“That man ruined my life,” she said through a translator, pointing and sobbing. “Look at him. He ruined my life.”

The man she was pointing at was Gregory Lee Hover, 38.

Hover and an alleged accomplice, 18-year-old Richard Freeman, are facing charges in two separate slayings that run the gamut from murder and robbery to kidnapping and sexual assault.

Roberta Romero’s testimony was part of a preliminary hearing in front of Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Joseph Sciscento.

The hearing was continued until April 29, at which point Sciscento will hear from more witnesses and decide if there is enough evidence to bind the charges to District Court for trial.

As it stands, the both men are charged in two separate murder cases: The slaying of Julio Romero, 64, and the killing of 21-year-old Prisma Contreras, a casino waitress whose body was found in a burned vehicle near Boulder City. Contreras had been sexually assaulted, strangled and stabbed.

Prosecutors say both cases have elements that could lead them to pursue the death penalty.

Roberta and Julio Romero married in 1998. They owned their home in southwestern Las Vegas, near the intersection Jones Boulevard and Russell Road.

It was a nice, single-story, three-bedroom house with a back yard and a pool.

A friend, Santiago Pozzi, had helped them secure the loan, Roberta Romero testified upon questioning from Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo.

On Jan. 24, a man who police and Roberta Romero later identified as Hover came to her home looking for Pozzi. The Romeros were already in bed when he rang the doorbell at 9:30 p.m., she said.

The couple hadn’t had contact with Pozzi for more than two years, Roberta said.

Hover, a process server who worked for June’s Legal Service, told the Romeros that he was looking for Pozzi because Pozzi owed $10,000 in a civil matter.

Neither Roberta nor Julio Romero spoke English, so the conversation with Hover on the Romeros’ doorstep was brief. Hover showed them an official-looking document and asked for a signature.

“He said to sign it and he won’t be coming back,” Roberta Romero testified.

But, according to Romero’s testimony, that was a lie.

At about 1 a.m., she woke up. The light was on and her husband was no longer in bed with her. She heard noises and yelled for her husband.

When she went into her kitchen, she saw the man who she said earlier that night had been on her doorstep.

This time, he was holding a gun and demanded money.

Frightened, Roberta Romero and the man went into the garage. She got her wallet out of her vehicle and handed it to him. She gave him the PIN number for her debit card. Then the man, still pointing the gun at her, forced her into her bedroom closet.

She said she was terrified. She didn’t know what had happened to her husband, but she saw his feet as she was led past another bedroom toward the closet, she said.

“I thought, if he’s pointing a gun at me, he must have killed my husband,” she testified.

The Clark County Coroner’s Office later said Julio Romero died from a gunshot wound to the head.

From inside the closet, Roberta Romero watched as the man ransacked her bedroom. He went through her dresser drawers and pocketed jewelry and other valuables.

Then the man’s cell phone rang.

“When he answered, he came at me and shot me in the face,” she said, visibly shaking on the witness stand. “He shot me and just left me, you know, laying there.”

She waited until she was sure the man had left her bedroom then dashed into a bathroom, where she grabbed the phone and called 911.

Police responded quickly and she was taken by ambulance to University Medical Center.

“I was very ill. I almost died,” she said.

The bullet went in on the left side of her nose, just below her eye, she said. One of the surgeries left her with a large scar on the right side of her neck. Parts of the bullet are still lodged inside her body, and she anticipates more surgeries to treat the lingering injuries, she said.

While in the hospital, Roberta Romero was able to identify Hover from a photo lineup. On cross-examination, Hover’s attorney, Chris Oram, honed in on discrepancies between the description she gave police and Hover’s actual physical description.

She said she had never seen Freeman, who was seated on the opposite side of the courtroom from Hover, before.

Police say Freeman was waiting for Hover in Hover’s white Nissan Sentra near the Romeros’ house while Hover was inside.

It was not the first time the men had committed a crime together, authorities allege.

Ten days earlier, Contreras’ body was found in an abandoned vehicle near U.S. 95 and Nelson’s Landing Road south of Boulder City.

Investigators said a series of interviews and other evidence link the two men to the crimes committed against Contreras.

Her family reported her missing Jan. 14 after she failed to return home from work at the Mad Onion restaurant at Hooters casino.

The next day, Boulder City Police officers found her blue 2006 Jeep Liberty with Nebraska license plates.

According to a Metro Police report, the vehicle smelled strongly of gasoline and had been burned. Contreras’ body, dressed in a Mad Onion uniform with a name tag that said “Prisma,” was found in the backseat.

When the Clark County coroner’s office conducted the autopsy on Contreras’ body, investigators noted marks on her neck consistent with a ligature as well as stab wounds to her throat, back, side and chest.

Police said the coroner’s office determined Contreras’ death was the result of multiple stab wounds, incised wounds and strangulation.

Christopher Brown, 26, a friend of Gregory Hover’s son and whose mother worked with Hover at June’s Legal Service, testified Thursday that Hover had talked about Contreras’ murder.

“He was talking about raping a Hooters waitress and how he took her out to the desert and set her on fire,” Brown testified. “But then he acted like he was joking.”

Brown also said he had been present when Freeman and Hover had a conversation about pawning jewelry.

Numerous pieces of jewelry taken from the Romero home had been pawned, and investigators were later able to locate them. They were linked through receipts to Freeman, police said.

Oram poked a number of holes in Brown’s testimony and pointed out inconsistencies between what he told police and what he said on the stand.

Family members of the victims and the accused were at the hearing, some of them crying quietly to themselves.

Both men are being held in the Clark County Detention Center without bail.