Esmeralda Romero was planning to pursue the Air Force before a July confrontation at her apartment complex ended in her death.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Weeks after 22-year-old Esmeralda Romero was killed outside the leasing office of her Albuquerque apartment complex, her family is asking that she be remembered not for the neighbor dispute police say preceded her death, but for the future she was building and the relationships she left behind.
Romero had recently turned 22 and was working toward joining the Air Force, according to relatives who spoke publicly about her in August. Her mother, Maria Rodriguez, described Romero as her best friend and recalled a daughter who stayed close to her family. Romero’s boyfriend of three years, Jonah Bejarano, said faith was central to the way she lived and cared for other people. Those memories have emerged as the criminal case against her downstairs neighbor, Michael Cain, continues in Bernalillo County.
An obituary identifies her as Esmeralda “Esme” Linette Romero and says she was born June 29, 2004, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She died July 20, only a few weeks after her birthday. Her family’s later accounts give a different scale to a case that initially drew attention because of the seemingly minor dispute investigators say preceded the killing: water from an upstairs patio reaching the patio below.
Rodriguez said she spoke with her daughter shortly before the attack. Romero told her mother that her downstairs neighbor had yelled at her in connection with water from a dog’s bowl spilling toward his patio, according to the family’s account. Rodriguez said that conversation was the last time she heard her daughter’s voice. Roughly 45 minutes later, she said, another call brought word that Romero was gone.
Police have accused Cain, 39, of killing Romero outside the Albuquerque Encore Apartments on Eubank Boulevard. He faces an open count of murder and tampering with evidence, according to the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office, and a judge has ordered him to remain in custody while the prosecution moves forward. Law&Crime previously reported that jail records also listed aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Cain has not been convicted, and the accusations against him remain subject to the court process.
The police account begins before Romero’s final conversation with her mother, with Cain complaining to apartment management about water spilling from Romero’s upstairs patio onto his own. A leasing-office employee told Cain that management would deal with the matter, investigators said. Cain later had a verbal confrontation with Romero and returned to the office with another complaint. Police say the employee again told him the issue would be handled. Cain then went outside and waited.
Romero entered the leasing office afterward. Her purpose, according to investigators, was not simply to discuss the water. She told the employee that Cain had come to her apartment, banged on the door and harassed her about the dispute. Romero also explained that water sometimes dripped from the bowl used by her small dog and denied Cain’s accusation that she was intentionally pouring water onto his patio. The employee said she was trying to resolve matters between the two residents and advised Romero to call security or 911 if Cain threatened her.
Investigators allege Cain attacked Romero as she left that office. The employee told police she saw him run from the parking area and repeatedly stab Romero. The employee also said Cain turned toward her afterward while holding the knife, then passed her and fled. Later family reporting said police video showed the killing. Romero died at the complex, according to the accounts reviewed for this article.
The investigation continued beyond the leasing-office area. Police said Cain ran away on foot and discarded a knife. Officers later found him in an alley near San Jacinto Drive NE and took him into custody. Authorities said a knife was recovered there and that Cain had called 911 and made statements about stabbing someone. Police also noted cuts on one of Cain’s hands. He was taken for medical care before being booked into jail. Those details form part of the prosecution narrative, although the weight of each piece of evidence has not yet been decided in court.
Romero’s relatives have spent the weeks since her death supplying the parts of her story that do not appear in an arrest report. Bejarano said she was driven by love and her Christian faith. Rodriguez recalled that her daughter had a habit of taking small personal items or clothing from relatives because they reminded her of the people she loved. What once felt mildly annoying, Rodriguez said in the later interview, has become one of the memories she wishes she could experience again.
The family’s account also emphasizes how abruptly ordinary plans ended. Romero was not described as someone preparing for a court fight or expecting to become the subject of homicide coverage. She was a young woman considering military service, maintaining a long-term relationship and staying in frequent contact with her mother. Her relatives’ public comments have placed those ambitions beside the much narrower series of events police recorded at the apartment complex on July 20.
That police chronology makes the scale of the escalation especially striking without resolving the legal questions that remain. Investigators say the dispute involved water reaching one resident’s patio from another resident’s space. Cain went to management about it. Romero later went to management to report Cain’s behavior. The employee separately told both residents that the situation was being addressed. Police nevertheless allege that Romero was attacked only moments after she completed her own complaint.
Authorities have not publicly established in the reviewed reports that Romero and Cain had a broader history beyond the conflict described around the water and the confrontation at her door. They also have not released a full account of any statement Cain may have given after his arrest. Prosecutors will have to establish the elements of any murder charge through admissible evidence, and Cain’s defense will have the opportunity to challenge the state’s version of events. Until then, his guilt or innocence remains unresolved.
The distinction matters to Romero’s family as well. The criminal case determines what legal responsibility, if any, Cain will bear. It cannot determine how Romero is remembered. Her mother and boyfriend have instead focused on the character they knew before July 20: a young woman they describe as loving, driven by faith and looking toward a future that included the Air Force.
The district attorney’s office says a judge has ordered Cain to remain jailed while the case goes through the judicial process. Public reporting reviewed for this article does not identify a trial date. The homicide allegations therefore remain pending, even as Romero’s relatives move into a much longer process of mourning that exists outside the courtroom.
For Rodriguez, the most important facts now extend beyond the sequence investigators will present to a judge or jury. Romero was her daughter, her frequent caller and, in her mother’s words, her closest companion. Her death may have entered public records through an apartment dispute, but the family’s recent account has made clear that the story they want preserved is the life that came before it.
Author note: Last updated August 28, 2026.