As trial begins, still no clear motive in Burnsville stabbing

A dying mother begged for help but never told police who stabbed her. Now the lawyer for the man charged suggests police got the wrong man in the brutal April attack.

By JOY POWELL, Star Tribune

Last update: October 27, 2009 - 12:17 AM

Tina San Roman, stabbed while in her garage, had made her way into her Burnsville townhouse, where she called 911.

"Help me, help me," she had begged dispatchers in a barely audible, raspy voice.

But San Roman, 35, died several days after the April 7 attack without ever telling police who had stabbed her. Whether it was Taylor Pass, a 19-year-old Eagan man who is now on trial, or a new boarder who owed her money, as Pass' lawyer suggests, is the question a Dakota County jury faces this week.

Burnsville police officer Nicholas Weidner told jurors on Monday of finding the woman lying on her back, eyes staring at the ceiling, unblinking. She had been stabbed while her 9-year-old son slept upstairs.

Her chest moved up and down slowly as she struggled to breathe, Weidner said. Dried contact lenses were stuck to her cheeks, and dried blood covered her neck.

Weidner lifted San Roman's tank top to see a stab wound in her chest, he said in opening-day testimony at the trial. Pass is charged with second-degree murder as well as attempted second-degree murder and second-degree assault for an alleged attack on the woman's boarder, Odai Al-Refo.

The woman kept saying, "Help me, help me, I can't breathe," Weidner testified.

"Stay with me, Tina," Weidner told her, holding her hand. "Stay with me."

Prosecutor Lawrence Clark said Pass' motive for the stabbings remains unknown. Pass had been buying marijuana for San Roman the night she died, according to testimony.

Al-Refo, 24, who now lives in North Carolina, testified on Monday that he got out of the shower that night, went down to the garage looking for San Roman and found Pass kneeling over her. Al-Refo said Pass told him that she was choking. Al-Refo testified that when he knelt down to help, Pass grabbed him by his jaw and sliced him from his neck to his shoulder.

Then, according to Al-Refo, the two struggled and Pass stabbed him in the back. Al-Refo said he picked up a child's scooter to fend off Pass, who fled. Then Al-Refo -- whose wounds were described as non-life-threatening -- also called 911, after San Roman did.

"Quick, close the door behind you!" Al-Refo told the arriving officers. "He's going to come back!"

Defense attorney Arlene Perkkio contended Al-Refo was the assailant, and she pointed out numerous inconsistencies between what he told police last spring and his testimony Monday.

Perkkio said evidence will show that DNA found on knives, including one that was broken and bloody, matched Al-Refo and San Roman, but not Pass.

Perkkio also noted that when an officer asked "Who did this?" Al-Refo talked over San Roman, shouting "Taylor!" Weidner acknowledged he did not directly ask San Roman who had stabbed her.

As paramedics worked on San Roman, Weidner rode with her in the ambulance, still holding her hand. San Roman, also known as Tina Kulyas, kept saying she wanted her mother.

"At one point, she stared up at me and said, 'I don't want to die,'" Weidner recounted. "Tina, you're not going to die," he told her, and she began to cry.

Burnsville police officer Brian Hasselman testified about searching the upstairs bedrooms of the townhouse and finding San Roman's son sleeping there as a movie soundtrack played loudly.

Before taking him downstairs, the officer told the boy to shut his eyes and not open them until the officer said so. So the boy squeezed his eyes shut as he was taken through the bloody scene where his mother had been found.

Testimony in the trial continues today.

Joy Powell • 952-882-9017