A death row inmate uttered shocking words of gratitude just before receiving a lethal injection after killing five people including his wife and two kids.
Michael Bernard Bell, 54, looked alertly around the death chamber while strapped to a gurney on Tuesday night as the drugs were administered into his left arm.
‘Thank you for not letting me spend the rest of my life in prison,’ said Bell moments before, according to a Florida State Prison team warden.
It was not clear if he directed the message toward the executioner, or someone else.
Bell closed his eyes and became motionless within about two minutes of the deadly concoction entering his body. His breathing became heavier, until it slowed and stopped completely.
The team warden shouted Bell’s name and checked his eyes at 6.15pm, and got no reaction. He started losing coluor from his face five minutes later, and a medical worker pronounced him dead at 6.25pm, said the governor’s spokesman, Bryan Griffin.
Bell at 6.30am had indulged in his last meal, which consisted of home fries, an omelet, bacon and orange juice. He did not have any visitors, except for a spiritual adviser.
He was convicted in 1995 of fatally shooting Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith outside of a bar in an act of revenge.
Bell in December 1993 saw what he believed was the car of a man who shot his brother dead months earlier, and picked up an AK-47 rifle and got two friends to pursue the man, state court records.
They waited outside a lounge where the car was parked and when West, Smith, and another woman approached the vehicle, Bell opened fire. West succumbed to his injuries at the scene and Smith died while being rushed to a hospital, and the other woman escaped unscathed.
Bell also fired at onlookers before fleeing. He was arrested the following year.
In 1996, Bell was also convicted of three more murders from 1989. He beat his wife, whom he was trying to divorce, with a machete and crowbar and strangling her to death, and killed their five- and seven-year-old children with the machete.
The US Supreme Court denied Bell’s request to stay his execution hours before he was injected. Earlier, Bell’s attorneys asked the state to halt his capital punishment due to new evidence on witness testimony, but justices last week said there was overwhelming evidence that he was guilty.
Bell is the 26th person to be executed in the US this year, and surpasses the total executions in the country in 2024. He was the eighth person to be executed in Florida, which has the highest number of any state so far this year.
The last inmate to be executed in Florida was Thomas Lee Guidinas, for raping and killing a former homecoming queen. He used his last breath to repent and made a reference to Jesus.
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