Texas executes man who killed Mexican, robbed him of $8

Austin (Texas), October 6

Texas on Tuesday executed a 35-year-old man convicted of fatally shooting a recently arrived Mexican immigrant in the head and robbing him of $8.

Juan Garcia was pronounced dead from a lethal injection at 6:26 pm at the state’s execution chamber in Huntsville, a prisons official said.

The execution was the 529^th in Texas since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 - the most of any state.

Garcia, then 18, was found guilty of killing Hugo Solano, 32, in a 1998 robbery in Houston. Garcia and three accomplices had launched a violent crime spree in the Houston area, which included the robbery, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said.

“When Solano refused to hand over any money, Garcia shot him four times in the head and neck, killing him,” it said.

This month, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended that the execution go ahead.

None of Garcia’s three co-defendants were sentenced to death.

“I never intended to kill him,” Garcia told the Houston Chronicle a few days before the execution. He added he did not rob Solano of $8 — the aggravating factor that made the crime a capital offense, the paper reported.

Prosecutors said he stole the money.

“I never intended it to happen the way it happened. I didn’t mean to kill. I had no reason to,” Garcia was quoted as saying by the paper. — Reuters