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TO South Carolina The man convicted of killing the parents of his ex -girlfriend with a baseball bat in 2001 was executed by a shooting team on Friday night, a method used for the first time in 15 years in the United States.
Brad Sigmon, 67, was declared dead at 6:08 pm after being killed by three volunteer prison employees in the Broad River Correctional Institution In Columbia, according to Associated Press.
Sigmon, who previously admitted to having killed the couple because his ex -girlfriend refused to answer him, had his eyes bandaged and tied to a chair with a chest goal.
Brad Sigmon was convicted of killing death to the parents of his separate girlfriend in Greenville County in 2001. (South Carolina Corrections Department through AP)
The executioners, Armed with rifles About 15 feet away, they fired bullets in their hearts.
All volunteers fired at the same time through openings on a wall, according to the AP. A dozen witnesses, sitting in a room separated from the camera by bullet resistant glass, could not see the executioners.
Only a few hours before the death sentence, the Supreme Court of the United States He denied an emergency motion to suspend the execution due to the South Carolina policies that surround the details of secret injection.
Governor Henry McMaster denied Clemency on Friday before execution. (Joshua Boucher/The State/Tribune News Service through Getty Images)
The governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster and the Attorney General of South Carolina, Alan Wilson, signed the action, despite the pleas of their lawyers to travel the death sentence to life imprisonment.
Sigmon’s lawyers argued that he was a model prisoner and the murders occurred while fighting with severe mental illness.
He decided to die shooting at the squad, citing fears on the electric chair and lethal injection, according to his representation.
South Carolina programming executions again after a vacation pause
The last meal of the double murderer was three cubes of the original Kentucky Fried Chickn of KFC, his lawyer, Gerald “Bo” King, told Wyff4.
Sigmon’s last meal consisted of Kentucky fried chicken.
According to reports, he ordered more than a bucket so that “he could share with the guys with which he is imprisoned in the death corridor,” King told The Outlet.
Sigmon said he killed the victims Gladys Larke, 59, and David Larke, 62, after he was discouraged by a trailer they possessed.
Then he unsuccessfully kidnapped his ex -girlfriend, Rebecca Armstrong, who jumped from his car in motion while shooting him, prosecutors said.
“My intention was to kill her and then to myself,” said Sigmon in a confession written by a detective after his arrest. “That was my intention all the time. If I couldn’t have it, I wasn’t going to let anyone else have it. And I knew it came to the point where I couldn’t have it.”
Shot squad chart (AP)
Armstrong told USA Today this week Sigmon “should answer for what he has done,” noting that his actions destroyed his family.
The killed parents of five lost the births of multiple grandchildren and five great -grandchildren.
Armstrong, who does not believe in the death penalty, said he would not attend the execution.
This photo provided by the South Carolina Corrections Department shows the State Death Chamber in Columbia, SC, including the electric chair, the right and a shots squad chair, to the left. (South Carolina Corrections Department through AP)
His son, Ricky Sims, told Greenville News that he would be there, with a couple of boots that were the last gift that his grandparents gave him.
“He is going to pay for what he has done,” Sims told The Outlet. “He took two people who would have done something for his family. They were the rock of our family … they did not deserve it.”
Executions in South Carolina resumed in September, when the State, once one of the leaders in executions, ended a 13 -year high in the administration of the death penalty.
It is one of the five states that authorize the use of shot squadrons in certain circumstances.
The chair in which John Albert Taylor was tied before being executed by a shooting team on January 26, 1996 in Utah. (Lee Celano/Reuters)
Only three inmates, all In UtahThey have been killed by a firing squad in the United States since the death penalty was restored in 1976.
Ronnie Gardner was the last prisoner to be executed by a shooting team in 2010.
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Twenty -five executions were carried out in the United States last year. Five have already been carried out in 2025, according to the death penalty information center.
King did not immediately respond to the request for comments from Fox News Digital.
Michael Dorgan and The Associated Press of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.