HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) _ Condemned Texas inmate Samuel Bustamante has been executed for fatally stabbing an illegal immigrant from Mexico during a robbery attempt in 1998.
Bustamante, 40, did not make a final statement Tuesday night. He took several nearly inaudible breaths as the lethal drugs took effect, then slipped into unconsciousness as four female friends he invited to the death chamber watched.
No friends or relatives of his victim were present.
He was executed for the slaying of 27-year-old Rafael Alvarado in Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston. Alvarado became a target of what Bustamante and some of his friends called “shopping trips” where they would hunt illegal immigrants, then beat and rob them.
He’s the seventh prisoner executed this year in the nation’s most active death penalty state.