Alabama executed a man Thursday who admitted to killing five people with an ax and gun during a drug-fueled rampage in 2016 and dropped his appeals and asked to be put to death. Derrick Dearman, 36, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. Thursday at Holman prison in southern Alabama. Dearman’s execution was one of two planned Thursday in the U.S., though a court halted the execution of Robert Roberson in Texas. Dearman had pleaded guilty to the five killings that prosecutors said began when he broke into the home where his estranged girlfriend had taken refuge, the Associated Press reports. Strapped to a gurney in the Alabama execution chamber, Dearman spoke to the family members of the victims and to his own family in his final statement. “Forgive me. This is not for me. This is for you,” he said to the victims’ families before adding, “I’ve taken so much.” He closed by telling his own family, “Y’all already know I love y’all.” Some of his words were inaudible. The execution started about 5:58 p.m., but it is unclear when the drugs began flowing. At one point, Dearman raised his head and looked around the chamber as if to inquire when they were starting. He soon after appeared to lose consciousness.
The lethal injection was scheduled after Dearman dropped his appeals this year and asked that his execution go forward. “I am guilty,” he wrote in an April letter to a judge, adding that “it’s not fair to the victims or their families to keep prolonging the justice that they so rightly deserve.” Dearman killed the five people on Aug. 20, 2016, at his estranged girlfriend's home near Citronelle, about 30 miles north of Mobile. Left dead were Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; and Chelsea Randall Reed, 22. Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, was pregnant when she was killed. All of the victims were related by blood or marriage. In a statement read by the Alabama prison commissioner, a man who lost his daughter, sister and brother in the killings, wrote there were no words to describe the impact the murders had on him and his family. He said Dearman got to say a final goodbye to his family, but they did not.
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