Prosecutors said surveillance footage, witness accounts and the recovered gun helped secure a first-degree murder conviction.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — The murder case against Romier Taguiam Narag moved from a 2023 street-side shooting in Daly City to a 2026 prison sentence through what prosecutors described as a direct chain of evidence: video, witnesses, the weapon and the defendant’s actions in front of police and family members.
That evidence mattered because the legal question was not whether Frances Kendra Lucero had been killed, but how jurors would classify the killing and whether the surrounding facts would support added findings for firearm use and child endangerment. They did. After a 14-day trial, the jury found Narag guilty of first-degree murder and other counts, and Judge Jeffrey Finigan later imposed a sentence of 64 years to life. The verdict and sentence turned a neighborhood shooting into one of San Mateo County’s most closely watched domestic violence cases.
Prosecutors traced the violence to March 6, 2023. Lucero had driven home with the couple’s children, then ages 3 and 4, after dinner. According to trial reporting, Narag followed her with a handgun. Deputy District Attorney Lucas King said Lucero was first shot near the home, then broke free and ran. As she tried to escape, Narag shot her four more times at close range. Patch and other local reports said she was hit several times, including twice in the back. Daly City police arrested Narag at the scene. The gun was later recovered from under a nearby vehicle, an important detail because it tied the physical evidence to the immediate arrest and the prosecution’s theory of the case.
The trial record described more than one source of proof. Redwood City Pulse reported that neighborhood security cameras captured the shooting and that Lucero’s brother rushed in to wrest the gun away from Narag. Those facts gave jurors both a visual timeline and live testimony about the seconds after the shooting. The deliberations were brief. The same report said jurors returned guilty verdicts in about four hours after closing arguments. For prosecutors, that speed suggested the case turned on evidence that was plain and difficult to dispute. Public reports do not lay out every exhibit introduced at trial, so some details of forensic testimony remain outside public view, but the available record points to a prosecution built on immediate scene evidence rather than a disputed long-term investigation.
Sentencing then shifted the case from proof to responsibility. Narag apologized in court, according to courtroom coverage, and said he hated the person he saw in the mirror. But he also told the court that Lucero had “pushed my buttons,” a statement that undercut the apology by suggesting shared blame for a shooting the jury had already found to be first-degree murder. Finigan answered in blunt terms. “The defendant has orphaned his own children and the devastation will last their entire lives,” the judge said. That exchange defined the hearing. One side tried to frame the killing as a loss of control. The court treated it as a deliberate crime with permanent effects on two children who were present when it happened.
The case also drew notice because it fit a broader pattern in the county. San Mateo County officials later identified Lucero among domestic violence homicide victims from 2023, and local advocates have cited the case while discussing the scale of intimate partner violence in the region. Still, the Narag prosecution stood out for the way it moved: an arrest at the scene, video evidence, a relatively fast jury verdict and a sentence that sharply reflected the child witnesses. The available public record leaves some questions unresolved, including whether Narag will challenge the verdict on appeal and what additional trial filings may become public later.
What comes next is procedural, not investigative. Narag has been sentenced, and the criminal facts established at trial are now part of the court record. Unless an appeal is filed, the county trial court’s role is largely finished. The evidence phase is over, the verdict stands, and the next milestone will be any notice of appeal or later release of records tied to the completed case.
Author note: Last updated April 6, 2026.