A 40-year-old US man was executed in Texas Tuesday for killing a teenager during a carjacking 12 years ago, prison authorities said, the third inmate put to death in the state this year.
Ronnie Threadgill was executed by lethal injection at 6:39 pm (2339 GMT) in Huntsville, Texas, shortly after his final appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court, a spokesman said.
Threadgill was sentenced to death for shooting to death 17-year-old Dexter McDonald, who was in a car Threadgill seized outside a nightclub in April 2001.
A second occupant of the vehicle managed to escape while Threadgill sped away with the injured McDonald in the back seat before stopping to pull him out of the car.
The teenager later died from his wounds in hospital, the statement from Texas officials said.
“I’m going to a better place,” Threadgill said in his final statement.
He was the third inmate put to death in Texas this year so far, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and the 495th since capital punishment was reinstated in the United States in 1976. More than a third of US executions take place in Texas.
Man executed in Texas for 2001 murder of a teen
