“I have caused so much damage”: The last words of a murderer of 5 people executed in Alabama

Alabama executed this Thursday a man who admitted to having killed five people in 2016 with an ax and a gun, who were relatives of his then-girlfriend.

Derrick Dearman36, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. Thursday at Holman Prison in south Alabama. He pleaded guilty to the murders, which prosecutors say began when he broke into the house where his partner had taken refuge.

Strapped to a gurney in the Alabama death chamber, Dearman spoke to the victims’ relatives and his own family in his final statement.

“To the family of the victims, forgive me. This is not for me, it is for you. I have caused so much damage. To my family, you already know that I love you,” he said.

The lethal injection was carried out after Dearman fired his lawyers, withdrew his appeals this year and asked that his execution go forward.

“I am guilty,” he wrote in a letter to a judge in April, adding that “It is not fair for the victims or their families to continue prolonging the justice they so richly deserve”.

Dearman was sentenced to death in 2018 for murdering five relatives of his then-girlfriend two years earlier, Laneta Lesterin a remote area of ​​Citronelle, Alabama.

The night of the crime

Dearman and Lester’s was an abusive relationship. On the night of August 19-20, 2016, Lester escaped to the home of his brother, Joseph Adam Turner. Dearman followed her, but when he was denied entry to the house, He broke down the door with an ax.

The man attacked with the ax and then shot Turner himself, 26, Robert Lee Brown (26), Chelsea Marie Reed (22), Justin Kaleb Reed (23) and Shannon Melissa Randall (35).

Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, she was pregnant when she was killed.

Dearman did not harm Lester or Turner and Randall’s 3-month-old baby. The next day, the attacker surrendered to the authorities.

Dearman’s was the fifth execution of 2024 in Alabama and number 20 in the United States, according to EFE.

Since the Supreme Court reintroduced the death penalty nearly half a century ago, 1,602 prisoners have been executed in the United States, 77 of them in Alabama.

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