A Santa Rosa woman testified Wednesday about a long-running affair with a former neighbor that prosecutors believe ended when the jealous father of her children shot the man dead outside a downtown brew pub.
Garicka Rush, 32, took the stand in a preliminary hearing for Ryan Dietz, 29, who is charged with slaying Jack Romero last summer outside Third Street Aleworks.
Rush explained how she lied to Dietz about going to visit her sister in the hospital the night she met up with Romero, 33, an ex-Sonoma County jail guard with two kids of his own.
They drank at the brew pub until closing and were walking out the front door when Rush said she returned to give the bartender a $6 tip.
She walked back to the front door, stopping to talk with other patrons, when she heard what sounded like fireworks going off outside.
"It was close to Fourth of July," Rush testified. "I heard a pop, pop, pop, pop."
She soon realized it was gunfire and that Romero was lying dead on the ground near the D Street parking garage with multiple bullet holes in him.
Rush testified under cross-examination that it occurred to her Dietz might be involved but she didn't let on to police. Instead, after talking to officers, she drove home and passed out on her bed, she testified.
A few hours later, she was awakened by phone calls from Dietz, who was at work. He asked her to dispose of a bag stashed in her truck and two shoe boxes in the garage.
Rush said she did as requested, tossing the bag in a dumpster off Farmers Lane and the boxes in a dumpster behind the Safeway grocery store on Highway 12 at Calistoga Road.
She looked in the bag and saw a small red box marked Winchester. One of the boxes had rifle bullets in it, she said.
Rush was later arrested by police, who had been watching her. She pleaded guilty to being an accessory under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors.
Dietz was arrested the same day. On Wednesday, he watched the mother of his three children testify about her off-again, on-again affair with Romero, which appeared to establish a motive for the killing.
Frequently smiling and even laughing, Rush described her efforts to hide the affair from Dietz with fake text-messages and lies about meeting girlfriends. She said Dietz caught her leaving Romero's apartment one night and later threatened to "do something stupid" if it didn't stop.
Rush said Romero carried a gun but didn't say if it was for protection against her boyfriend.
"(Dietz) had dreams of murdering him," Rush testified.
However, the evidence against Dietz appeared mostly circumstantial. No guns were ever found and prosecutors have yet to put Dietz at the scene.
He was arrested after a witness picked his photo from a police lineup.
But on Wednesday the witness testified he could not identify Dietz. Billy With said he saw a man walking calmly to a minivan on D Street just after shots were fired. The man looked over his shoulder as he opened the van door but he could not see his face, With testified.
He testified his memory has since been clouded by a head injury. He was hit on the head with a ball-peen hammer, With said.
"In my memory now I cannot see him in my head," With testified.
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