Hero or Vigilante? Man Faces Murder Trial for Shooting Burglar : Florida: Manny Roman says he was asleep in his office when he heard the sound of breaking glass. He grabbed a gun, opened the door and came face to face with an intruder. He fired and fired. But prosecutors contend he also reloaded.

Manny Roman removed the cards and letters from a worn manila envelope and spread them on the desk.

One thank-you card, with a bunny holding a bouquet of daisies, reads: “Justice will prevail. Because of you, one less criminal is on the streets.”

A message in another says: “It’s absolutely about time criminals got what they deserved--quick justice.”

And yet another: “You should be given a hero’s medal. . . .”

To his friends, neighbors and to those victimized in one of America’s most crime-ridden cities, Manny Roman is a folk hero. He is lauded for killing a burglar who broke into his auto-repair business late one night nearly three years ago.

But the state of Florida has charged him with second-degree murder.

The state has offered him a plea bargain with community service instead of prison time, but he wants to keep his record clean.

Roman says he is willing to put his fate in the hands of a jury of his peers.

“I feel it was self-defense,” Roman said. “I don’t think I should plead guilty.”

Roman isn’t your Charles Bronson-movie, vigilante type. Well-mannered and slight, the Cuban immigrant speaks softly but rapidly, often switching from English to Spanish and back again in one sentence.

The 57-year-old Roman, who is divorced, came to Miami from Cuba in the late 1960s in the Freedom Flights. He proudly shows photographs of his three grown children and grandchildren.

His business is a hodgepodge of auto parts--a pyramid of Honda steering wheels, car doors stacked three rows deep, a plethora of auto innards from carburetors to radios.

The shop is nothing fancy, but for a burglar it offers plenty of equipment for the taking. His shop had been burglarized several times before the shooting--and has been broken into twice since.

On Nov. 14, 1992, Roman says, he was between residences and decided to spend the night in a room adjacent to his receptionist’s office rather than go back to his mother’s home across town.

At 1:30 a.m., he heard the crash of a window being shattered in the garage and then another crash in the office. He grabbed his gun, a 9mm Beretta, and opened the office door.

“When I opened the door we were face to face,” Roman said. “I was afraid. I just kept shooting and I went back and closed the door of the office and called 911. . . . I was panicked. You have no control, really.”

When the police arrived and turned on the lights in the receptionist’s office, they found Stanley Dixon--a known cocaine user with a long list of previous arrests--dead.

A hammer lay by the 35-year-old’s bullet-ridden body. Police assured Roman he did the right thing; he would not be arrested.

The day after the shooting, Roman closed the business early and went to take his 18-month-old granddaughter, Alexandria, for a walk.

It was then, as he was looking into the innocent child’s face, that he fully understood the impact of the events of the previous 12 hours.

“I was thinking how nobody wants to kill anybody,” he said, fighting back the tears. “I remember that day, when I was carrying my granddaughter, thinking how fragile she was, trying to understand how people can stray, how this individual ruined his life and ended up ruining mine.”

Eight months after the shooting, police arrived at Roman’s business and arrested him. He sat for 13 hours in jail as nearby inmates fought over the phone and food.

“That was the biggest scare of my life,” Roman said. “I was thinking, ‘Why do I have to be here? I defended my life.”’

The state attorney disagreed.

Prosecutors say that while five bullets struck the front of Stanley Dixon’s body, six others hit him in the back. Roman fired 13 shots from his gun.

The Beretta holds 15 bullets in the clip and police found five unspent cartridges when they arrived. The prosecutors’ conclusion: Roman reloaded.

There also were questions about why Roman was at his business at that hour. Was he tired of being robbed and looking for justice? Or was he there because he was indeed between houses? Investigators say he has said both.

“You can’t go around shooting people like that,” Dade County Assistant State Attorney David Waksman told the Miami Herald before he stopped talking to the news media about the case. “He shot this guy in the back, then he reloaded and shot him again.”

Roman’s attorney, Ed O’Donnell, says the decision to arrest Roman was made by a detective, an investigator and a medical examiner who had never been at the scene.

“These people are in a detached situation, in air-conditioned offices, looking at this like law students looking at a case,” O’Donnell said. “They never have been to the scene, and they said, ‘Oh, this guy’s been shot too many times.’ ”

Roman says in his panic he remembers trying to reload the gun after shooting Dixon because he heard what sounded like two other men in the garage.

Roman also sees no contradiction in saying he was using his business as his home those days and he was tired of being a crime victim. Both statements are true, he says.

Roman was scheduled for trial last month, but the case was postponed again until Sept. 5.

Other recent cases in the Miami area indicate prosecuting Roman will not be easy.

In 1986, Prentice Rasheed in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood killed a burglar with an electrified booby trap at his business. He was arrested, but a grand jury refused to indict him. Prentice Rasheed’s actions drew national attention.

In 1993, in nearby Dania, City Vice Mayor Charles McElyea was acquitted of aggravated assault for shooting two teen-agers as they scrambled over the fence of his towing business.

Businesses in Miami, a predominantly Cuban city, have rallied around Roman like a brother. The former mayor and several police officers pledged their support.

“I know he’s a hard-working man and nonaggressive,” said Ted Semanski, a former police officer and Roman’s friend for 20 years. “The way I look at it, he panicked. When someone is breaking in with a hammer, you have a lot of adrenaline going. How are you going to hold back? . . . He’s not a criminal.”

The Dixon family, meanwhile, is tired of seeking justice since Roman’s case has been postponed so many times. The Stanley Dixon they knew was more than just a name on a rap sheet.

“They’re going to do what they’re going to do,” said Pernease Dixon, the victim’s mother. “It won’t bring my son back.”