US carries out first firing squad execution since 2010

A South Carolina man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat was put to death by firing squad Friday in the first such execution in the United States in 15 years.

Brad Sigmon, 67, was executed by a three-person firing squad at the Broad River Correctional Institution in the state capital Columbia, South Carolina prison spokeswoman Chrysti Shain says.

Shain says the fatal shots were fired at 6:05 p.m. and Sigmon was pronounced dead by a physician at 6:08 p.m.

Journalists who witnessed the execution from behind bulletproof glass said Sigmon was wearing a black jumpsuit with a small red bullseye made of paper or cloth over his heart and was strapped into a chair in the death chamber.

In a final statement read out by his attorney, Gerald “Bo” King, Sigmon said he wanted to send a message of “love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty.”

A hood was then placed over Sigmon’s head. About two minutes later, the firing squad — volunteers from the South Carolina Department of Corrections — fired their rifles through a slit in a wall about 15 feet (five meters) away.

Sigmon had a choice between lethal injection, the firing squad or the electric chair.