A South Carolina death row inmate was executed by a firing squad for the 2004 murder of an off-duty police officer.
Mikal Mahdi, 42, did not look at witnesses or give a final statement before he was shot dead inside Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.
Mahdi sat strapped to a metal chair beneath a hood, with a red bulleye target placed over his heart before three prison staff fired rounds into his chest.
The inmate cried out, flexed his arms, and groaned as he took his final breaths. He was pronounced dead four minutes after the shots were fired.
Mahdi was sentenced to death for the 2004 killing of public safety officer Captain James Myers, who was shot nine times and set on fire.
He had also murdered a North Carolina convenience store clerk three days before Myers’ slaying.
“I’m guilty as hell,” Mahdi wrote in a letter before his death. “What I’ve done is irredeemable.”
