Prosecutors alleged a defendant fatally shot two rival gang members during a fist-fight in 1997 before DC Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman on March 17.
Oscar Diaz-Romero, 47, is charged with two counts of second-degree murder for his alleged involvement in the fatal shooting of Jose Noel Coreas-Carcaro, 22, and Jose Molina, 27, in a restaurant on the 2400 block of 18th Street, NW, on Aug. 9, 1997.
According to court documents, Diaz-Romero was allegedly in a rival gang including Coreas-Carcaro and Molina. Both gangs showed up at the same bar and a fist fight broke out between them.
Prosecutors claimed Diaz-Romero escalated the fist fight by using a gun and taking two lives. He wasn’t “in imminent danger. [He was] the imminent danger,” prosecutors said.
After the shooting, prosecutors alleged Diaz-Romero ran out of the back entrance and fled to El Salvador, where he hid for almost 30 years before being extradited back to the United States in January 2025.
Prosecutors said multiple witnesses at the scene identified Diaz-Romero as the shooter through his Miami Dolphins jersey, tattoos, or nickname, “Kiko.”
According to prosecutors, those identifications supported a warrant for Diaz-Romero’s arrest, but when Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers got to his house at the time, he was gone. MPD officers searched his house and found his resident alien card, which the prosecutors said was “not the kind of card [Diaz-Romero would] leave behind if [he was] ever going to come back.”
As part of the prosecution’s opening slideshow, they displayed a photo taken in 1999 of a detective and Diaz-Romero together in El Salvador. They argued the photo was evidence of Diaz-Romero’s location in El Salvador just two years after this incident until his extradition in 2025.
According to prosecutors, the detective went to El Salvador to find criminals who escaped the United States to a safe haven free from extradition. While there, he found Diaz-Romero and captured the photo as evidence.
Diaz-Romero’s attorney, Destiny Fullwood-Singh, acknowledged Diaz-Romero was at the bar around the time of the homicides, but he wasn’t the shooter.
Following the shooting, Fullwood-Singh said MPD officers brought in a group of “suspects,” none of whom were Diaz-Romero. She stated that the other suspects had “every reason to lie” to shift guilt away from them towards Diaz-Romero and many of them will testify on the prosecution’s behalf.
“They will contradict each other. They will contradict themselves,” Fullwood-Singh said. She cautioned the jury that multiple versions of the incident will emerge because the group of suspects couldn’t keep their stories straight. The day of the incident, she said, the group drove away together, had a conversation about what to present to the police, and then made themselves available.
She noted the lack of a firearm, DNA evidence, and matching fingerprints connecting Diaz-Romero to the crime.
Additionally, the story that the defendant “fled” to El Salvador is not true, Fullwood-Singh said. MPD detectives knew where Diaz-Romero was, even in 2010, when the first successful extradition of a Salvadoran national occurred.
Fullwood-Singh reminded the jury of the photo introduced by the prosecution of a MPD detective and Diaz-Romero sitting together in El Salvador from the early 2000s. “That’s not a man in hiding,” she stated. “They knew exactly where he was.”
After openings, prosecutors examined two family members of the victims. Molina’s mother testified that her son was “a good man.” “He got along well with everybody,” she said.
Prosecutors also called Coreas-Carcaro’s sister, who told the jury that her brother was “loving” and “always joking.”
Prosecutors also called a United States Secret Service (USSS) officer who responded to the crime scene. The officer said he was flagged down and told that a shooting had occurred at the bar.
The officer explained how he entered the second floor of the bar and saw two bodies near the bathroom “laying across each other.” After MPD took over the investigation, he had no other involvement with the case.
On cross examination from Diaz-Romero’s other attorney, Julie Swaney, the officer said he was unsure if the victims were dead when he saw them, so he called for an ambulance but didn’t examine them.
Prosecutors then called an acquaintance of Diaz-Romero who was at the bar on the morning of the shooting. The witness knew Diaz-Romero as “Kiko,” through mutual friends and having only met him a few times.
The acquaintance testified to seeing Diaz-Romero in the bar that morning and later as a part of the “big scuffle” between two groups happening on the floor.
According to the acquaintance, members from different groups began fighting on the floor in front of the bar. He said it was, “just chaos. Everyone was flying.” Everyone was throwing punches, he said, Diaz-Romero included.
Suddenly, he said he heard gunshots erupt from the fight. He and his friends fled and went back to their car before being picked up by police and questioned about the incident.
He also told the jury that one of his friends told him Diaz-Romero, who was wearing a number 13 Miami Dolphins jersey at the bar, was the shooter.
Due to time constraints, the defense will cross-examine the acquaintance when the trial reconvenes another day.
In addition, the prosecutors called the crime scene analyst to testify who collected physical evidence from the scene, including bullet fragments, clothing, and latent prints. She explained for the jury that crime scene officers’ duties are to “document crime scenes and recover evidence.”
On cross examination, she clarified that MPD officers set up the crime scene perimeter, not her and she never spoke to witnesses and was only focused on the physical evidence.
Parties are slated to reconvene March 18.
