By Vinny Vella
The Philadelphia Inquirer
DELAWARE COUNTY, Pa. — A Delaware County volunteer fire chief was convicted Monday of ethnic intimidation, terroristic threats, and related crimes for calling a woman the N-word, among other slurs, during a tense encounter in 2024.
John Romano, 48, said the woman was “a wild animal,” according to police body camera footage played during his trial last month before Judge Margaret J. Amoroso, who handed down her verdict Monday.
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Romano, the assistant fire chief at the Sharon Hill Fire Company, also said he was “tired of dealing with them,” the footage showed.
District Attorney Tanner Rouse said Monday that Romano’s conviction “is an important reminder that words have consequences.”
“What happened in this case was not an argument between two people,” Rouse said. “It was a disturbing encounter involving racial slurs, intimidation, threats, and behavior that left someone fearing for their safety. No one should have to endure this kind of treatment, plain and simple.”
Romano and the woman crossed paths on Hook Road in Darby Township in November 2024, while Romano was using a forklift to unload Christmas trees. His forklift, the woman testified, was blocking the road, causing a traffic jam of irritated drivers who were honking their horns.
After the car in front of hers squeezed through a small gap near the forklift, the woman said, Romano got out of the forklift, “rushed” to the passenger-side window of her car and demanded to know why she was honking at him.
From the outset, she said, Romano was “on full-blast rage.”
He called her the N-word, as well as another slur, she said, and took a picture of her license plate, telling her he would “take care” of her at her home. When she said she was calling the police, Romano told her to do so, saying he knew the county sheriff.
Romano’s attorney, Christopher Boggs, said in his closing arguments that the confrontation was “more akin to a road-rage incident,” and was not a case of ethnic intimidation.
Romano, upset at the car horns honking, would have said “awful things to anyone in that circumstance,” he said.
Amoroso is expected to sentence Romano on Sept. 28.
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