‘You’re my angel. You saved me’
Woman at centre of hit-and-run case defends the man now charged with manslaughter
The woman at the centre of an extraordinary case, in which a split-second decision left one man dead, says she would not be alive today if it weren’t for the “angel” who ran her alleged assailant down with his car.
Alicia Aquino says that Anthony Kiss, the man who hit and killed Dario Romero in June, and who now faces charges of manslaughter in his death, was the only passerby to answer her calls for help.
“I owe my life to him,” Aquino told the Star in an emotional interview Tuesday. “He has four children, and it’s not fair to charge this man.”
Aquino, a hotel room attendant who was on her way to work in the early hours of June 7, said she decided to speak to the Star after hearing how the charges have negatively affected Kiss’s life.
She felt compelled to tell her story, she said, because she could not imagine Kiss being sent to prison, away from his four children, for several years. She also wanted to add her perspective to a story that has been playing out, and debated, online.
In a previous interview with the Star — details of which were corroborated by his girlfriend, who was in the car at the time — Kiss, 31, said he ran Romero down because he saw him wielding a knife and chasing a woman into the street. He did it, Kiss said, to save her life.
Neither Kiss’s nor Aquino’s version of events have been tested in court.
Kiss is charged with impaired operation of a motor vehicle causing death, over 80 milligrams operation of a motor vehicle causing death and failure to stop at scene of accident causing death. Kiss told the Star he had a few beers at a concert that night, but wasn’t impaired.
He said he blew just over the legal limit. He said he left the scene of the crash before he was arrested because he was in “straight shock” and panicked. He is out on bail and will return to court Aug. 3.
In her telling of the story, 59-yearold Aquino did not provide granular details of what happened during the alleged attack out of respect for police requests to not compromise evidence in the case. She was advised by criminal lawyer, Daniel Brown, whom her family reached out to after seeing his comments on the case in a Star article.
“She wanted a lawyer to help her tell the story within the boundaries of what she was allowed to share, but without compromising the integrity of the investigation,” said Brown, who is not being paid for his work.
Romero’s brother-in-law, who didn’t want to be named citing the nature of his work with children, said the public can’t know the full story because Romero is dead.
“People should remember that Dario isn’t here to give his account of the story,” he said. “These stories can influence potential jurors.”
The alleged attack took place around 4:30 a.m. at the bus stop near Eglinton Ave. W., and Black Creek Dr. Aquino said she was on her way to work at a downtown hotel, where she has been working for 27 years. She had been taking this particular route for seven years. At the time, she was standing by the bus stop texting with her girlfriend, who was asking her to pick up two coffees — one black, one double double.
“Usually I will go and stay in the shelter, but this time something told me ‘no, stand at the bus stop don’t go to the shelter,’ ” she said.
That’s when she noticed a man approaching. Initially, she thought nothing of it.
“When I see this gentleman coming towards me, I don’t think (anything) because I meet all kinds of people in the morning,” she said.
Romero, 37, spoke to Aquino, she said, but “he wasn’t making any sense.” Romero’s family has previously told the Star that he was a wonderful father to a young son, and that he had been diagnosed with extreme paranoia.
He said two sentences to her, Aquino said, adding she did not respond to him. She had never seen him before. Aquino said that Romero then pulled out a knife and tried to slash at her. She says she ran away from him, but he knocked her to the ground on the street and kicked and stomped her.
“I’m screaming and I see cars passing by, nobody stopped,” she said, through tears. “I was calling for help.”
She fought with Romero on the ground and managed to get away. Romero continued to chase her and tripped her, and she fell down again, this time on the median, she said.
“And I hear this thing, ‘boom!’ behind me,” she said. At that point, Aquino, a single mother of five and grandmother to seven, said she thought it was over.
“I just crossed my arms, and I said ‘I’m dead, I’m not going to see my grandchildren and my kids,’ ” she said, adding that she had not yet seen her youngest granddaughter, who had just been born and was still in the hospital.
“A few seconds later, I open up my eyes and I can feel that I was in a lot of pain. I have no idea what had happened.”
Aquino was not stabbed during the altercation. Her injuries to the lower half of her body were caused by the attacker kicking and tripping her, she said. The “boom” she heard, she now knows, she said, was Kiss driving into Romero.
The next thing Aquino said she remembers were three men surrounding her, two of them construction workers.
“It’s OK, you’re OK,” she remembers one of the men telling her. She asked them to call the police, and they told her they already had.
Aquino said she then asked one of the men helping her to take her to the driver of the car, but he told her to wait for an ambulance instead. She says she yelled in the direction of where she believed Kiss was — but she doesn’t know for sure if it was him because her glasses were knocked off and she could only see shadows.
“‘You’re my angel. You saved me!’ ” Aquino said she remembered shouting. Of Kiss, she added, “he’s the only one who put his family on the side to save me, to do something for me.” An ambulance took Aquino to St. Joseph’s hospital, where she stayed for a couple of hours. She says that she has trouble walking and that her physical injuries have prevented her from returning to work — a job that requires physical exertion. The hotel where she works provided her sick leave at a portion of her salary for six weeks, but it has now expired and she is struggling to pay basic bills. She has had to give up her weekend jobs cleaning houses.
The incident has also taken a drastic toll on her mental health, she said.
She is not eating or sleeping properly and is afraid to leave the house alone.
“I’m 59, I feel like 80 now,” she said. “I have sweats, I wake up sweating, I have to have someone around 24/7.”
Adding to her stress is her knowing that Kiss is facing jail time for what he did, she said, adding she would be “devastated” if he was convicted: “It’s not fair when somebody stood up to the plate.”
In response to online comments the public has made that Kiss should have just honked his horn, Aquino said she does not believe it would have made a difference.
“I was the target, so no matter what other people did, I don’t think so,” she said.
Brown, the lawyer who advised Aquino, said he believes that what Kiss did was “well within the boundaries of the law.”
“In Canadian law, the use of deadly force is only permitted in very rare circumstances — for example, where it is necessary to protect someone from death or serious bodily harm,” Brown said in an email to the Star.
“Some of the factors a judge will consider in assessing this defence include whether the use of force was imminent and whether there were other means available to respond to the potential use of force. In this case, Mr. Kiss could not have done anything less to stop this vicious attack. While tragic, the facts completely support Mr. Kiss’s response to this violent encounter.”
Toronto police declined to comment on the case.
Aquino said she has made it clear to the Toronto police officers investigating the case that she would like to meet Kiss. The police told her that would compromise the case.
Said Aquino: “I feel this (interview) is the only way for now to get it out there so people can understand why he did what he did.”
“He’s the only one who put his family on the side to save me, to do something for me.”
ALICIA AQUINO ON ANTHONY KISS