January 28, (THEWILL) – A 46-year-old inmate, Donald Grant has been executed for the brutal killing of a hotel manager and an employee at La Quinta Inn during a robbery operation in 2001.
He received a lethal injection on Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was declared dead at 10:16 a.m.
It was the first execution in the US in 2022 and the third in Oklahoma since the state resumed lethal injections in October 2021 following a halt in 2015.
“Yo, God, I got this. No medication. I didn’t take anything. Brooklyn for life”, Grant said while lying strapped to the gurney, delivering his disjointed last words for two minutes.
Even after Grant was told his two minutes to deliver his last words had ended and the microphone inside the execution chamber was turned off, Grant continued to speak to about seven witnesses who attended the execution on his behalf.
A few minutes later, Grant’s eyelids began to droop and he appeared to be sleeping. After a doctor entered the room to conduct a consciousness check, rubbing his sternum and calling his name, Grant could be heard snoring as a prison official declared him unconscious. He appeared to stop breathing about two minutes later.
Ahead of his death, Grant requested a last meal consisting of sesame chicken, egg rolls, shrimp fried rice, and an apple fritter. If there was no dessert, he requested three pints of strawberry ice cream.
Grant had admitted to killing Brenda McElyea, 29, and Felicia Suzette Smith, 43, during a 2001 robbery to stop them from identifying him.
He had said he sought the $200 he stole during the robbery more than two decades ago to bail his girlfriend out of jail.
Before his execution, Grant said he regretted his actions and blamed the devil for the murders.
“First and foremost, I’d like to express my sincere deep regrets and remorse for my actions. I know words can’t bring them back. I understand … I can’t change that. You know, I wish I could and everything”, he said.
Reports say Grant grew up in Brooklyn, New York and was raised in a number of foster homes.
Shirl Pilcher, the sister of one of Grant’s victims, Brenda McElyea, said her family felt that justice had been served.
“Although Donald Grant’s execution does not bring Brenda back, it allows us all to finally move forward knowing justice was served.
“Our memories can hopefully be less jaded and clouded by the past. For me, whenever I have a thought of her, I always have to go back to, ‘Is he going to get out? Is something going to change? And now today I know that that’s finally over and that’s done.”
“I hope that now when … When I think of her, I can go straight to that memory, whether it was when I first brought my daughter home from the hospital (Brenda) was there.
“Hopefully, those types of memories can come to the foreground and I don’t have to go through the past to be able to remember the memory of her instead of the memory of her death”, Pilcher said after witnessing his execution.
Grant’s execution was Oklahoma’s first since problems with the state’s lethal injection protocols in 2014 and 2015 led to a de facto moratorium.
Richard Glossip was just hours away from being executed in September 2015 when prison officials realised they received the wrong lethal drug.
It was later learned the same wrong drug had been used to execute an inmate in January 2015.
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