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Girl's death jolts neighbors

Mobile home park residents cope with the loss of a 10-year-old girl who was killed in an accident Thursday.

By BEN MONTGOMERY
Published March 11, 2006

SEFFNER - They were talking about it Friday in line at the Citgo and up U.S. Highway 92 at Cheapo Auto Sales and here, behind the doors of mobile homes at Family Rentals of Seffner, a little park stuck between a used-car lot and a scrap metal yard.

This is where Jennifer Romo lived, where boys play baseball with sticks and girls with ponytails draw hopscotch on patios. She rode her pink Precious Pearls bike through here for a month, since her family moved to Lot 4 to be closer to Lopez Elementary School, where the 10-year-old who loved pizza and cheerleading and spelling big words was in the fifth grade.

And then she was gone.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office says it was an accident. A 28-year-old woman named Beverly Evans, who moved to Tampa not long ago from Gainesville, Ga., had been westbound on U.S. 92 when Jennifer started to cross the road.

It was an everyday thing for the girl with brown hair who said "yes, sir" and "no, ma'am." She would slip across the two-lane to buy Now and Laters and Snickers bars with the help of food stamps, said Sam Patel, who works behind the counter at the Citgo. She'd tuck the candy inside a purse and head home, about a quarter-mile away.

"I was the last person to see her alive," Patel said. "She didn't even have a chance to cry."

Jennifer died in the hospital, according to the Sheriff's office.

Evans was a mess at the scene. She had her own son, 5, with her. She shook in a chair not far from the busted pink bicycle until she was loaded into an ambulance. When her son started to cry, a woman gathered him.

"It's all right," she said. "Mama's going to be okay."

"She's just sad," another said. "That's all."

The news spread through the park across the street.

"We're all like family here," said Michele Hendry, whose four kids befriended Jennifer. "When we heard, we were in bad shape."

"I felt like I was gonna cry or something," said Maria Martinez, 10, who just the other day had been chasing Jennifer with a squirt gun. "She was our best friend here."

"You never heard anything out of her, no cussing, nothing like that," said Linda Hesters, who lives on Lot 9. "Always clean. Always well mannered. You wouldn't think she was one of us, you know?"

All the kids go to Lopez Elementary. School was rough today, they said, even though crisis counselors were around. Jennifer's friends and teachers collected $300 to buy gift cards to Kash n' Karry for the family.

"She was just a beautiful little girl," said principal Al Dahma.

The folks at the mobile home park were talking about buying a big piece of poster board so all the kids could write a message. They'd carry it down to Lot 4 and put it on the porch.

A family was mourning there Friday.

"I have to bury my 10-year-old," said Samantha Romo, Jennifer's mother. "She was my baby girl."

Back outside, there was talk among the adults of demanding a crosswalk or a stoplight on U.S. 92, and worry about the heavy traffic these days and the danger out there for children in a place that's changing fast.

Times staff writer S.I. Rosenbaum contributed to this report. Ben Montgomery can be reached at 813 661-2443 or bmontgomery@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 11, 2006, 01:42:13]