Juan Romero, who helped Robert Kennedy dying, died at age 68

Juan Romero, the hotel driver who came to the aid of Senator Robert F. Kennedy when he was shot in Los Angeles in 1968, died Monday in Modesto, California. He was 68 years old.

His longtime friend, Rigo Chacon, a television reporter, told the Los Angeles Times that Mr. Romero had apparently had a heart attack several days earlier.

Mr. Romero was a teenage street boy working in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in June 1968. Kennedy, a few moments after delivering a victory speech in a California Democratic primary, came in and was hit at the headed by an assassin.

Mr. Romero rushed to Kennedy and held him back while he was lying on the ground, mortally wounded. Mr. Romero later stated that he had a hard time preventing the senator's head from hitting the ground.

The moment, filmed, haunted him for years. Kennedy had stopped shaking hands for a few seconds before being shot, and Mr. Romero asked if he could have done anything to prevent the shooting, he said. .

But he ended by saying that he no longer felt guilty, partly thanks to Kennedy's supporters who claimed that as an American-Mexican he was an example of the kind of people that Kennedy had sought to help make racial equality and civil rights a cornerstone. of the work of his life.

Born in the small town of Mazatán, in the state of Sonora, Mexico, Mr. Romero moved to Baja California, then to the United States at the age of 10. began organizing walkouts to protest discrimination against Americans of Mexican descent.

Mr. Romero stated that he was afraid to face problems at his home when he participated in the demonstrations; his father-in-law, he said, had "ruled with an iron hand". Instead, he found a job at the ambassador, first as a dishwasher.

Mr. Romero met with Kennedy the day before the California primary, when the senator and his aides ordered room service at the hotel. Mr. Romero was on duty and entered the room with other bus boys. Kennedy shook hands too, he said.

Voters went to the polls the next day and that night, Kennedy thanked a crowd of supporters in the hotel's embassy room before leaving for the nearby kitchen.

The press photographers took photos of Mr. Romero next to Kennedy, a bloody city – images that would be seen around the world.

"Is everyone O.K.?" Said Kennedy after being shot. Yes, Mr. Romero answered before Kennedy lost consciousness. He said he put a rosary in the senator's hand.

Kennedy was pronounced dead at the hospital a few hours later. He was 42 years old.

Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Jordanian national, said at his trial that he shot at Kennedy for the senator's support of Israel. Now 74, Mr. Sirhan is serving a life sentence in a California jail.