Fresh out of prison, a former lifer finds his footing training for the L.A. Marathon
LA TimesGilbert Anthony Romero, who was paroled from prison last year, trains for the L.A. Marathon. “At one time, I would have said ‘death,’ but God said, ‘Vengeance is mine.’” She added: “He will come up for parole in about 29 years. Romero felt nothing after Razzael’s death, but when his grandmother died in 2004, he realized he had never been able to say “I love you” one last time. “That was the first moment I really got to feel what Razzael’s family felt,” Romero said. “That was my moment when the light bulb went on and was like, ‘This is what you denied that family.’ That’s when I started getting in depth with taking responsibility, trying to feel empathy and remorse for what I did.” Now he thinks about his friend in the passenger seat with the rifle and wrestles with the question: “Why didn’t you stop him?” A few years ago, after classes had helped Romero better understand himself and his past, he wrote letters to the people shot that night in 1990: to James Cardey, Perry Reyes, Roberto Ruiz, and to the family of Razzael Bright.
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