A Sierra Vista man who shot two people during an incident in which he admittedly “sprayed” bullets into a group outside a bar last year has been ordered to stand trial in October after rejecting two plea offers.
Romeo Sincere Bethea faces a potential 20 years in prison if convicted by a Cochise County jury of all 10 felonies in a grand jury indictment handed down for his confessed actions on Sept. 18, 2022, and other alleged offenses. The charges include multiple counts of aggravated assault with five separate victims.
Bethea, 23, has turned down two plea offers from the Cochise County Attorney’s Office, including one in January which called for only 3.5 years in state prison to resolve the case without a lengthy trial. He also rejected a March plea deal that called for him to serve a 7.5-year prison sentence.
Both offers also required a 5-year term of probation.
Two separate Donald Hearings have been conducted in Bethea’s case during which the terms of a current plea agreement are reviewed in open court with the defendant. There is also a detailed recitation of what liability a defendant faces if convicted at trial, which for Bethea could easily be two decades.
Judge Jason Lindstrom of the Cochise County Superior Court recently set the case for a three-week jury trial beginning Oct. 23 after the judge confirmed for a third time that Bethea was uninterested in the plea deal offered by Deputy County Attorney Terisha Driggs.
A key piece of evidence Driggs will present at the trial is Bethea’s post-Miranda statements to Det. Thomas Ransford of the Sierra Vista Police Department.
According to court records, SVPD officers responded to a report of a shooting around 2 a.m.in a business district that includes JR’s Bar. A short time later, two men with gunshot wounds arrived at Canyon Vista Medical Center from which they were transported to a Tucson hospital for higher level care.
But Bethea’s statement suggests it is amazing only two people were hit by his spray of bullets.
Witnesses and Bethea agree that the incident began with a disturbance between two young women near the bar property with a handful of other people in the area. What happened next differs depending on who investigators interviewed, according to a probable cause statement filed with the court following Bethea’s arrest.
One of the victims, identified only as J.M., was shot in the buttocks after he says he got out of his vehicle upon seeing Bethea display a gun. As the victim was purportedly trying to get everyone to disburse, he says the man later identified as Bethea “started shooting.”
Bethea, however, said in a post-Miranda statement that he was struck by one of the two young women as he tried to break up their fight. He then pointed a handgun in the air only after being confronted by a Hispanic male in the group, Bethea says.
“Romeo stated he had a .25 cal pistol in his back pocket and he pulled it out and pointed it into the air when one of the Hispanic males came towards him and swung at him,” Ranford noted in statement. “He stated he pointed the gun at the Hispanic male and shot it once or twice.”
Bethea further stated he randomly fired shots at the group because they would not get into their cars “and some of the individuals starting walking towards him,” according to the statement.
When Bethea ran out of bullets “he threw the gun into the field to the west of JR’s” and then ran to his vehicle and drove home, Ransford wrote.
Ransford also reviewed video evidence and social media images to identify the shooter before Bethea was arrested later that morning. Bethea’s bail set at $15,000, which was posted for his pretrial release from jail two months later.
The other charges contained in Bethea’s indictment are: five counts of disorderly conduct with a weapon, one count of tampering with physical evidence related to the gun, and two counts of aggravated assault by means of force that “causes temporary but substantial” disfigurement, loss or impairment of any body organ or part, or a fracture of any body part.