San Mateo County judge has sentenced a Daly City man to 64 years to life in prison for fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend outside her home nearly three years ago, in a case prosecutors said unfolded in front of the couple’s two small children.
The sentence closes the trial stage of a 2023 killing that drew wide attention in the Bay Area because of the ages of the children and the way prosecutors said the shooting happened. A jury found Romier Taguiam Narag guilty last month of first-degree murder and child endangerment in the death of Frances Lucero. The immediate stakes now shift from the verdict itself to the formal wrap-up of the case, including restitution and any future appeals, while Lucero’s family continues raising the two children left behind.
The killing happened on March 6, 2023, outside Lucero’s home in Daly City, just south of San Francisco. Prosecutors said Lucero, 27, had returned from dinner with the couple’s children, who were 3 and 4 at the time, when an argument began with Narag, then 27. Deputy District Attorney Lucas King told jurors during trial that Narag followed Lucero with a handgun, shot her once, then fired again as she tried to break free and run. Prosecutors said he shot her several times in close range, including twice in the back, before police arrived and arrested him at the scene. Investigators later recovered the gun from beneath a nearby vehicle, and neighborhood security cameras captured the shooting, according to trial reporting and local news accounts.
By the time the case reached a jury, prosecutors were arguing that the shooting was not a sudden burst of anger but a deliberate killing carried out in front of the children. After a 14-day trial, jurors returned guilty verdicts on Feb. 4 on first-degree murder and child-related counts, and they also found true sentencing enhancements tied to the use of a firearm and the circumstances of the attack. At sentencing last week, Judge Jeffrey Finigan said the crime had “orphaned” the couple’s children and would shape their lives long after the prison term began. Courtroom coverage said Narag apologized during the hearing, said he hated the person he had become, and then partly blamed Lucero, telling the court, “She pushed my buttons and it just happened.” That statement gave the hearing a sharper edge, because it paired remorse with an effort to shift part of the blame back onto the woman he had just been convicted of killing.
The case has remained raw for Lucero’s relatives because it left two children without either parent at home. Family members have said the children were too young to understand the shooting when it happened and have had to grow up with questions that adults around them still struggle to answer. Lucero’s mother, Liezel Chan Lucero, has spoken publicly over the past year about raising the children and about the emotional cost of the long wait for trial. In one television interview before the verdict, she said the children sometimes asked whether there was “a way to get ahold of my mom.” Public tributes to Lucero described her as a devoted mother, daughter and friend. That combination of criminal prosecution and very public grieving kept the case in view even as it moved slowly through the court system, with family members pressing for accountability while also trying to build stability for the children.
The timeline also helps explain why the sentence drew such attention. The shooting happened almost three years before the prison term was imposed. During that span, the family spoke out, local outlets covered the delays and rescheduled trial dates, and prosecutors assembled evidence that included witness testimony, surveillance footage and forensic details about the gunfire. When the case finally went to trial, the proceedings moved much faster than the years leading up to them. Trial reporting said jurors deliberated only a few hours before convicting Narag. Prosecutors then urged the court to treat the killing as planned and especially grave because Lucero was trying to get away when she was shot and because the children were there. The judge, according to local coverage of the hearing, read a lengthy record of findings and aggravating factors before announcing the sentence, signaling that the court viewed the killing as more than an ordinary murder conviction with a standard penalty.
The next formal step in the case is a restitution hearing scheduled for May 4. That hearing is expected to address financial losses tied to the killing, which can include funeral costs and other expenses recognized by the court. Beyond that, the likely legal path is narrower. Narag has already been sentenced to state prison, so future developments will most likely come through post-conviction motions or an appeal rather than another trial. Prosecutors have framed the sentence as a measure of closure, though not an end to the damage done to Lucero’s family. The defense position at sentencing, as reflected in courtroom coverage, focused on Narag’s apology and regret. But the verdict and the sentence mean the court accepted the prosecution’s central theory that Lucero was killed intentionally and that the presence of the children made the crime even more severe under California law.
Even after the sentence, the most vivid details remain the human ones. Lucero’s family has described a young mother whose life revolved around her children and who was killed in a place that should have been safe: outside her own home, near family, after an ordinary evening. Narag’s words in court also left a mark, not because they changed the outcome, but because they showed how the case is likely to be remembered. An apology can sometimes bring a measure of calm to a sentencing hearing. Here, the effort to explain the shooting by saying Lucero had “pushed my buttons” appeared to deepen the pain in a case already defined by loss. The judge’s line about Narag having “orphaned” his own children captured that central fact. The sentence answered the criminal charge. It did not answer the larger question of how two children process the violent death of their mother at the hands of their father.
Narag now faces decades in prison, and Lucero’s family is preparing for the May 4 restitution hearing as the next court date. With the conviction entered and the sentence imposed, the case stands at a point where the legal record is largely set, but the personal fallout is still unfolding.
Author note: Last updated March 11, 2026.