John Jefferson
Background: The Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services station in Little Rock, Ark. where Cassandra Pena-Romero was killed (Google Maps). Inset (left): Omar Pena-Romero (Pulaski County Jail). Inset (right): Cassandra Pena-Romero (Facebook).
An Arkansas man who confessed to fatally shooting his estranged wife, an emergency dispatcher, when she filed for divorce pleaded guilty and will spend the next 60 years behind bars.
According to court documents, Omar Pena-Romero, 24, entered a guilty plea on Nov. 18, more than one year after police apprehended him after he shot his wife, Cassandra Pena-Romero, 27, as she was leaving her job at the headquarters of Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services (MEMS) in Little Rock. Moments before she was shot, Cassandra texted “SOS” to her colleagues inside. They found her bleeding in the parking lot, and she succumbed to her injuries four days later.
Before the shooting on Aug. 19, 2023, Cassandra — who shared a young son with Pena-Romero — had filed for divorce, claiming that her husband sexually assaulted her, according to court documents. She also claimed that earlier in the month, Pena-Romero voluntarily checked himself into a psychiatric ward for five days, where he exhibited signs that he wanted to harm himself and others. On Aug. 7, Cassandra stated that her husband showed her a suicide note he’d written.
According to court documents, Pena-Romero physically threatened Cassandra on “several occasions” and threatened to take their child and flee to Mexico. She was granted a temporary restraining order against Pena-Romero on Aug. 7; he was arrested for the alleged rape the same day. She filed for divorce on Aug. 11.
Pena-Romero was also an employee at MEMS until the rape accusation, at which point he was suspended, according to Fox News. MEMS employees were told about the situation and instructed to ban Pena-Romero from the building. Cassandra had also commenced a relationship with another MEMS employee, Alan Yeargan, who was the first to find her and render aid after finding her in the parking lot.
Five hours after shooting his estranged wife, Pena-Romero was apprehended by police and taken into custody. He told Fox News in an exclusive letter that when his wife told him she wanted to end their marriage, it “filled my heart with much rage and sadness.” He denied the sexual assault, and claimed that it was a lie meant to get him deported back to Mexico. Pena-Romero claimed that when he viewed “footage” of his wife with Yeargan the night he was jailed for the assault, “that fueled the fire even more and I lost control.” The divorce papers that came days later were, apparently, the final straw.
Pena-Romero added, “I know I’m a monster for what I did,” and “I let the evil that got to me win and I will never forgive myself.”
Greg Thompson, MEMS executive director, said in a statement to CBS News, “Dispatchers are the first step of the life-saving work of emergency services, and Casandra was a true community hero.” He also told Fox News, “She saved lives every day in her role as a MEMS dispatcher and continued to do so as an organ donor.”
Pena-Romero pleaded guilty to first-degree murder with a firearm enhancement. He was sentenced to 60 years at the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
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