HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- A prisoner on death row for killing a 5-year-old girl and her grandmother in a gang-related shooting at a child's birthday party in Fort Worth a decade ago was executed Wednesday evening.
Erick Davila received lethal injection for using a laser-sighted semi-automatic rifle to spray bullets at about 20 people -- more than a dozen of them children. Annette Stevenson, 48, and her granddaughter, Queshawn Stevenson, were killed and four others were wounded, including the girl who was celebrating her 9th birthday.
Davila, 31, belted to a gurney in the Texas death chamber, offered no apologies. He appeared almost cocky as several relatives of his victims entered the witness area of the death chamber.
He raised his head off the gurney and acknowledged some whom he appeared to know.
"I may have lost the fight, but I'm still a soldier," he said when asked by the warden if he wanted to make a statement. "Take it as it is. To my supporters and family, y'all hold it down. Ten toes down. That's all I got to say."
He was pronounced dead at 6:31 p.m., 14 minutes after the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital was administered. Davila was the ninth prisoner executed in the U.S. this year, five of them in Texas.
Authorities said the April 6, 2008, attack was in apparent retaliation for a previous run-in Davila had with the slain girl's father, who was attending the party.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Davila's lawyers about 30 minutes before the punishment was carried out.
A Section on 04/26/2018