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Woman Copes With Senseless Death, Shattered Life

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By TODD LESKANIC

tleskanic@tampatrib.com

Published: January 4, 2009

HUDSON - Anger and desperation pushed Jennifer Roma to chase the man who swiped her mother's purse, knocked her down and left her dying on the pavement of the T.J. Maxx parking lot.

The man ran to a waiting car and got in. Roma followed, yelling at the attacker and giving no thought to whether the man had a weapon. She got to the driver's side window and looked in seconds before the gray Buick drove away.

Linda Roma, 62, died of a severe head injury the next day.

In reflective moments, Jennifer Roma is thankful she didn't get her hands on the man responsible for the Nov. 12 attack and her mother's subsequent death. A parking lot struggle could have had any number of endings, and most of them likely would have added to her family's devastation.

"When I chased after that guy, I wasn't even thinking," Jennifer Roma said in an interview last month. "That's what scares me in a way. I wasn't thinking. That guy could have had a knife or he could have turned around and tried to kill me. It was the adrenaline, and I had never experienced it in my whole life."

Jennifer Roma, her younger brother, Glenn, and her father, Ralph, are just starting to put their lives back together. The random and sudden nature of Linda Roma's death makes it difficult to absorb, much less understand.

Linda Roma's assailant, who authorities say was 38-year-old Steven Anthony Cruz, is now charged with first-degree murder. He probably did not set out to harm anyone that night, authorities say; the attacker was more likely looking for a quick dollar to feed a drug habit.

More excruciating for the Romas is the thought that the attack resulted from a set of unlikely and uncontrollable coincidences that put the would-be thief outside the T.J. Maxx at the exact moment Jennifer Roma and her mother were walking out of the store.

Jennifer Roma said she looked at the man and instinctively knew he was bad news. Before she could turn to her mother and warn her, the man and her mother were in a struggle over the purse. Seconds later, it was over. Linda Roma never regained consciousness.

Thousands of things, large and small, changed in those few seconds. Gone was a faithful wife, attentive mother and a career woman who had worked as a hair dresser for years but found enough energy to return to school to earn a nursing degree.

Ralph Roma, 78, lost his wife of some 40 years, a mate he sincerely enjoyed and depended on more as his health declined.

Jennifer Roma, 33, and Glenn Roma, 30, lost a mother who taught them to remain close; to always keep a sense of humor about life; and to continue to pursue education.

Jennifer Roma is a private school teacher in Pinellas County and her brother, once a high school valedictorian, earned a Ph.D. and works as a researcher at the University of South Florida. The have a close relationship and can always find the time to joke around with each other.

For Jennifer Roma, her mother's death also meant the loss of someone who was willing to adopt her and raise her as her own child. Linda and Ralph Roma adopted Jennifer shortly after her birth in 1975. Jennifer Roma said she no longer has any interest in looking for her birth mother.

There have been scads of other, less noticeable, changes in her life since her mother's death.

She no longer wears penny loafers - shoes she loves - because she was wearing them on the night of the attack. Now, she opts almost exclusively for running shoes.

She sometimes has trouble looking at the T.J. Maxx shopping center when she drives by on U.S. 19. One day recently, she drove by the store, looked straight ahead and thought, "Not making eye contact, not making eye contact." Her sense of humor allowed her to chuckle about it later.

She can't look at a Buick without thinking about the getaway car.

She won't walk by herself at night and thinks twice about getting out of her car to do something she previously would have done without a second thought, like pick up dinner.

For Jennifer, Glenn and Ralph Roma, life rolls along, giving them little choice but to adapt to the sudden void left by a man looking for a quick buck.

"It's hard to believe she's gone," Jennifer Roma said. "I have moments I can feel bad and do what I have to do but then I have to move on. If you sit here and think about all the bad things that happened, you're going to self-destruct."

Reporter Todd Leskanic can be reached at (727) 815-1084.

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