Sentence 40 years in wife’s death

A 44-year-old Little Rock man accused of cutting his wife’s throat in front of at least one of their four children has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for first-degree murder.

ADVERTISEMENT

More headlines

Jose Carlos Romero, 44, will have to serve 28 years before he can qualify for parole, according to a sentencing order signed Tuesday by Judge Herbert Wright. He pleaded guilty last month, five days after the one-year anniversary of the slaying of 39-year-old Rosa Dina Castro Orellano, in exchange for prosecutors reducing the charge from capital murder. Romero had been scheduled to go on trial Tuesday.

Police, called to the family’s Grace Road home by the couple’s 15-year-old daughter, found Orellano dead in a pool of blood on the living room floor less than two weeks before Christmas in 2013. The girl told police that Romero had cut Orellano’s throat, then sliced his own neck before fleeing the house, a police report said.

An hour after police found the body, a bloody Romero showed up in the backyard and was taken into custody after being treated for his injuries. Doctors who examined him found he had a bloodstained box cutter, court filings show.

A witness inside the home, unidentified in court files, reported hearing Orellano scream and saw Romero walking through the home with a bloody hammer. Orellano was then seen with blood on her head and said Romero had hit her, according to the witness account.

Romero went into the room with Orellano, walked behind her, grabbed her hair, pulled her head back and cut her throat with a box cutter, the witness told police. Romero then approached the witness, said “it’s all over now,” and sliced his own throat with the box cutter before walking out of the home.

The couple’s three children, two daughters and a son, were home at the time of the killing. Orellano’s 22-year-old daughter also lived at the family home. She told authorities that her stepfather had threatened to kill Orellano and the couple’s oldest daughter when the three had lived in North Carolina.

She didn’t say when that was, and property records show the couple, both natives of El Salvador, have lived in Arkansas since at least 2011. The daughter, Yahaira Berrios, was appointed the guardian of the couple’s daughters, a teenager and a toddler, last month.

Upcoming Events