"He was funny," Alvina says. "He knew how to dance."
But he had a dark side, too. "It seemed like he was angry," his mother says. "He would hit the wall, he would punch the mailbox."
courtesy of the Roman family
Roy Roman Jr. poses with Romeo, the family Chihuahua, shortly before the 16-year-old's death.
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She'd get on him about being respectful, particularly when he didn't let her know where he was.
His father recalls, "We'd tell him, This isn't just Motel 6, where you can come and go as you please.'"
Last fall, Roy was charged with third-degree burglary, and sent to the county's detention facility in Mesa. Roy Sr. says he misunderstood the paperwork, and missed his son's hearing date. Next thing he heard, Roy Jr. was at Adobe Mountain.
The strange thing, his parents say, is that Roy was doing so well at Adobe. They visited him at almost every opportunity, sometimes twice a week.
"Each time I'd see him, he'd be more positive," Villa says. He was working on his GED, and told the staff at Adobe he needed glasses. He got them.
"He just looked so professional. I told him, this just changes your whole attitude," Villa says, recalling that the kids told him he looked like a professor, which he loved.
The day before his death, Roy called home to see if the family was planning to visit that afternoon. Alvina gave him the bad news. His father, a plumber, had to work overtime, and the family wouldn't be coming. Roy hung up on his sister, but called back five minutes later, she says, sounding happy, asking how she was doing and telling her he was fine.
The following morning, Roy Sr. got a phone call just before 11. It was Peter Luszczak, superintendent of Adobe Mountain School.
"He goes, Your son has hung himself,'" Roy Sr. remembers, clutching the family Chihuahua, Romeo.
"I said, What the hell are you telling me, man? Is he all right?'"
Luszczak said he didn't know, and told him to go to John C. Lincoln Hospital.
By the time the family got to the hospital, Roy Jr. was dead.
"Basically, they haven't told us jack," Roy Sr. says. What the family has heard is that Roy Jr. got into a verbal confrontation with someone – either another kid or a staff member – on the morning of March 23. Afterward, he spoke with a counselor, then walked into his cell and shut the door. Ten minutes later, a staff member found him. Roy Jr. died in the same cottage, Freedom, as Christopher Camacho.
The family was told that Roy Jr. tied his belt to a cabinet or something mounted on the wall in his cell, stuck his head through the loop, and leaned forward.
A few days later, a memorial was held at Adobe Mountain, in honor of Roy Roman Jr. Peter Luszczak was there, Roy's family says, but David Gaspar was not. They never met Gaspar.
He didn't come to the hospital, either.
