McAlester, Oklahoma. (AP) – An Oklahoma man who fatally shot a woman during an invasion and robbery at home 20 years ago apologized to the victim’s family before being executed on Thursday, remorse, a woman injured in the attack said she was sincere but arrived too late.
Wendell Grissom, 56, was declared dead by lethal injection in the Penitentiary of the state of Oklahoma in Mcalester at 10:13 am was the first execution of Oklahoma of 2025.
“He took a total of 13 minutes to die, and took a total of two minutes to kill my best friend,” said Dreu Kopf, whom Grissom shot several times, but managed to flee from the house.
Grisom and a coaccusado, Jessie Floyd Johns, were convicted of killing Amber Matthews, 23, and wounding Kopf at the Kopf Blaine County residence. Johns was sentenced to life imprisonment without probation.
“I apologize to all of you that I have hurt,” said Graysom, bearded and with a gray prison uniform, while tied to the stretcher, an intravenous line attached to his left arm. “I’m so sorry that I have put that hatred in your heart for me.”
Grissom said he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time of murder and asked the victims’ family to forgive him.
“I pray that everyone can forgive me,” he said. “Not for my good. For your good.”
A minister prayed at the foot of Grissom when lethal drugs began to flow. He exhaled with force several times and could be heard snoring when a doctor entered the execution chamber and declared him unconscious about five minutes later. He seemed to stop breathing at 10:09 am and the color began to drain from his face.
More than two dozen friends and family of Matthews witnessed the execution of Grisom.
This week three other executions were scheduled in the United States. Louisiana killed a man on Tuesday Nitrogen gas use For the first time, since he resumed executions after a 15 -year parenthesis. A man who kidnapped and murdered his girlfriend’s ex -husband in Arizona was executed on Wednesday by lethal injection. Another lethal injection is scheduled on Thursday In Florida.
Prosecutors said Grissom, who had a long criminal record, picked up Johns, who was doing Caketop, and the two men drove west by the interest 40 when they decided to commit robberies. They randomly selected Kopf’s house near Watonga, where Matthews was visiting Kopf and his two young daughters.
Matthews was shot twice on the head and clung to life on the floor like Kopf, also shot twice and seriously injured, managed to flee in the Graysom truck to get help, prosecutors said. Grissom and Johns also fled, in a four -wheel stolen vehicle, but quickly ran out of gas and were captured after taking a coffee walk in a nearby county.
The authorities found Kopf’s daughters still inside the house, physically unharmed. Matthews died after being transferred by helicopter to an Oklahoma City hospital.
Kopf and his daughters, now 19 and 20, were also witnessed by the execution of Grisom.
Grissom’s lawyers did not play their fault, but argued in a Clemency audience that suffered from brain damage that never appeared to a jury. The forgiveness of the State and the Board of Probation denied the graysom application to recommend Clemency.
Grissom’s lawyers told the Board that he always accepted responsibility and wrote an apology to Matthews’s family during his first interview with the police.
“You can’t change the past, but now it is and has always been deeply ashamed and repentant,” said Kristi Christopher, lawyer from the Federal Public Defender’s office.
Christopher said his legal team did not follow a last -minute appeal, according to the Grassom’s request.
Kopf told the board that it still has deep mental and physical scars of the attack, including bullet fragments that are still in his body. In the years elapsed since the attack, he said, has called 911 when the bell sounds unexpectedly or a stranger appears in his neighborhood.
“I lived in a state of high fear at all times,” he said cryingly.
Oklahoma’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, has called Matthew killing a case of “textbook” death.
“The crimes committed by the attacks of Grissom, random and brutal against innocent strange in the holiness of their own home, are the guy who keeps people awake at night,” Drummond said during the audience last month.
The lethal injection of Grissom is the 128th execution of the state of Oklahoma since the United States restored the death penalty in 1976, as shown in state prison records. It was the first since Kevin Underwood was executed In December.
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This story has been corrected to show that the IV was placed on Grisom’s left arm, not his right arm.
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