California man convicted of fatally strangling his ex after she filed restraining order against him

ANAHEIM, Calif. (TCD) -- A 37-year-old man has been convicted of killing his 24-year-old ex-girlfriend in 2023 before they were set to go to trial for a domestic violence attack several months earlier.

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office announced May 29 that a jury found Aaron Romo guilty of one felony count of the first-degree murder of his ex-girlfriend, Mirelle Mateus. He was also convicted of one felony count of domestic battery with corporal injury, false imprisonment by menace, violence, and fraud or deceit after beating Mateus and throwing her over a fence in 2022. Romo is scheduled to be sentenced on June 24 and faces up to life in state prison with the possibility of parole.

According to prosecutors, on March 17, 2023, Romo called Mateus and asked her to pick him up after he had sustained injuries from a physical altercation outside a bar. At the time, Mateus reportedly had a restraining order against him, but she picked him up and brought him to his home.

The district attorney’s office said Mateus’ mother became worried the following day after Mateus failed to return home and wasn’t answering her phone. The mother reportedly "went to Romo’s apartment and found the apartment’s door open and Mateus dead in the bathroom." Prosecutors said she "had been badly beaten and strangled to death."

Officials apprehended Romo in Riverside at his current girlfriend’s home. According to the district attorney’s office, he had unsuccessfully tried to take his own life multiple times before his arrest.

At the time of the incident, Romo was set to go to trial on domestic violence charges after reportedly hitting Mateus and throwing her over a patio fence on Dec. 5, 2022. Officials arrested Romo for the attack, but he was later released and ordered not to contact Mateus.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said, "A mother’s last memory of her daughter should not be finding her lifeless body on the floor where she spent the last moments of her life struggling to get away from the man who had repeatedly abused her."

Spitzer called Romo a "master manipulator who repeatedly lured his victim back in only to ruthlessly beat and strangle her until she took her last breath."