Inset: Romi Frentescu (McLennan County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The Bruceville-Eddy, Texas, intersection where Frentescu fatally shot a father and son (Google Maps).
A Texas man convicted of orchestrating a deadly roadside ambush will spend the rest of his life in prison for the killings of a father and son.
Romi Frentescu, 33, stood trial earlier this month in McLennan County on two counts of capital murder, along with charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, tampering with evidence and making a terroristic threat in connection with the deaths of Michael David Morris, 38, and Braxton Johnson, 18, Law&Crime previously reported.
Jurors needed only about an hour to reach a verdict, finding Frentescu guilty of capital murder, the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
Because prosecutors did not pursue the death penalty, Texas law required that Frentescu receive an automatic sentence of life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
The fatal shooting happened in October 2024 near the intersection of Mackey Ranch Road and Old Moody Road in Bruceville-Eddy, a small community about 20 miles south of Waco.
Authorities took Frentescu into custody soon after the deadly encounter.
Investigators said the violence grew out of a dispute involving rival motorcycle groups in Texas.
Prosecutors noted the defendant is a ranking member of the Ugly Man Cossacks and Morris was a member of the 1%ers Cossacks.
In its opening statement, the defense capitalized on those dynamics — saying there was long-standing bad blood between Morris and Frentescu and painting Morris as the aggressor on the day in question, according to a courtroom report by Waco-based CBS affiliate KWTX.
The defense claimed Frentescu acted in self-defense — after Morris pulled a switchblade on him — by shooting and killing the pair.
The state, however, cast the defendant in a cruel light.
A witness recalled Frentescu returning to the crime scene and telling a nurse who was rendering aid, “Let him f—ing die.”
The witness also described seeing the shooting.
He said his daughter was outside playing basketball when she screamed about two men arguing in the road. The witness said he went outside to find the bikers “squaring up” as if to have a fistfight, but that after someone said “let’s do this,” one of the men pulled out a gun.
Someone in a pickup truck then drove over one of the motorcycles, and four shots rang out — one of the men could be heard screaming, “You just murdered two people. You are going to prison,” the witness testified. Finally, Frentescu fled in a red pickup driven by a woman.
A short time later, Frentescu and the woman returned, the witness said. That’s when the defendant angrily told the nurse to stop attending to one of the victims, according to the testimony.
“There was no remorse for what he had done,” the witness added.
The witness also said he never saw Morris with the alleged knife.
Officers who later arrested Frentescu alleged that the defendant’s lack of visible injuries was inconsistent with his story, according to charging documents obtained by Waco-based Fox affiliate KWKT.
The defense stressed the self-defense theory of the case — but to no avail.
The defendant’s lawyers said the 1%er Cossacks were incensed at the Ugly Man Cossacks for being a splinter group and had put out a “smash-on-sight order” against the group’s members, including Frentescu.
To that end, the defense said Morris drove by his client’s house on the day of the shooting, revved his engine, and made an obscene gesture. This allegedly happened after Morris threatened to burn down Frentescu’s house and kill his dog.
“Romi is a peacemaker,” one defense attorney said. “He tried to calm the situation down. He tried to mediate the situation, but Morris would have nothing to do with that…Romi was defending himself every minute of that day.”
But the prosecution countered those arguments with witness testimony.
One man currently serving a six-month state jail sentence for various crimes testified that Frentescu told him he killed two people after luring Morris out of his home to engage in a fight, KWTX reported.
“He said it was like when you are fishing and casting bait for fish to come,” the witness said. “He said he went out looking for him on his motorcycle to draw him out like bait. He just told me that it got done, that he had completed the project that he set out to do.”
In the end, the jury sided with the state.
The post ‘Let him f—ing die’: Man lured then killed father and son during roadside altercation and later returned to the crime scene to yell at a nurse rendering aid first appeared on Law & Crime.
