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Ohio executes man: The state of Ohio put a man to death on Wednesday for killing a security guard at a bookstore in 1994.
Ohio executed a man on Wednesday for the 1994 killing of a bookstore security guard after going on a crime spree that stretched across several states.
Frederick Treesh, 48, was pronounced dead after he was given a high dose of pentobarbital, The Associated Press confirmed.
He was convicted of killing Henry Dupree, the guard, just east of Cleveland around 19 years ago. He and another person were also the suspects in the killing of a video store clerk, Ghassan Danno, several days earlier in Michigan.
He also shot and wounded a cashier, Louis Lauver, to get money to buy crack cocaine.
“This is where drugs lead you,” Treesh, who used to be addicted to coaine, said in his last statement obtained by AP. He also apologized to the family of Dupree.
“I am here for Henry Dupree,” he said in a statement, according to Reuters. “I’d like to apologize to the family for what I’ve done. I’m sorry.”
Deanne Danno, the sister-in-law of the slain video store clerk, told the news agency: “There’s one less sadistic killer in this world. He has no heart. He’s a soulless person that should never have been brought into this world.”
[Related: Death Penalty Falls Worldwide, With China Excluded from the Calculation]
He is the first person to be executed in Ohio and the fourth to be executed in the United States this year, said the Death Penalty Information Center.
Last week, Ohio Gov. John Kasich denied giving Treesh clemecy after the state parole board recommended it, according to AP.
Treesh and his accomplice, Benjamin Brooks, “gratuitously brutalized, humiliated and killed innocent people, most of whom, like Dupree, posed no real or perceived threat to them,” the parole board said in its recommendation, according to AP.
Brooks was sentenced to 40 years to life for his role in the crimes, according to Reuters.
Treesh was also accused of bank robberies, carjackings, and a kidnapping across several states.
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