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Brad Keith Sigmon die through the shooting of the squad in South Carolina. Who is he?


Sigmon is expected to be the first inmate in South Carolina, which has been carried out by shooting in modern history and the fourth in the USA since 1977. All four other versions of the fires were in Utah.

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When his five -year -old girlfriend was separated from him, Brad Keith Sigmon grabbed.

Sigmon killed her parents David and Gladys Larke in their house and met them nine times with a baseball bat. Then he kidnapped his ex and shot her once after she had jumped out of his frenzied car. She survived.

Sigmon, who is to be suspended in South Carolina in South Carolina on Friday, has always admitted to having murdered the Larkes in 2001.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’m guilty,” said Sigmon, according to archived reporting in the Greenville News, part of the USA Today Network. “I have no excuse for what I did. It is my fault and I don’t try not to blame anyone else, and I’m sorry.”

In the meantime, his ex-girlfriend Rebecca Armstrong to USA Today-in said her first interview in the 24 years since the murder of Sigmon’s parent-dass Sigmon’s actions tore apart her family and that “he should answer what he did”, although she does not believe in the death penalty.

When Sigmon’s execution progresses, he becomes the first inmate in South Carolina, which has been carried out with the shooting of modern history and fourth in the USA since 1977. Sigmon chose the method via the electric chair or the fatal injection.

When his execution approaches, USA Today looks back on his crime, who was his victims and what they can expect from the first execution of the fire brigade for 15 years.

Brad Keith Sigmon murdered the Larkes

On April 27, 2001, Sigmon appeared in Armstrong’s parents’ home with a plan, which he slipped with Crack cocaine the night before: he wanted to tie David and Gladys Rarke and ex -kidnapped, he told the police.

Instead, he hit the couple to death with a baseball bat and, according to the police and a medical examination report, met each of them. Sigmon kidnapped Armstrong in his car, but she jumped out of the movable vehicle and was able to escape, even though Sigmon shot her into her foot before his weapon came out of the balls according to court records.

Sigmon always admitted to his guilt and told the jury in his 2002 court proceedings that he had no excuse for what he was doing and said when he was in love with him, according to Greenville news.

“I was obsessed with her,” he said to the jury. “Did I loved her? More than anything in the world. “

He continued to tell the jury that the death penalty was probably appropriate in his case and said: “I hate what I did.”

“Do I deserve to die? I’m probably doing it, “he said.” I don’t want to die. It would kill my mother, my brothers and my sisters … I just want to live for my family’s family. “

The Larkes family “says they were their” glue “

The jurors in Sigmon’s murder process also heard of family members of David and Gladys Rarke, who were 62 and 59 years old. Her adult children cried on the witness stand and spoke of their devastation.

“I am who I am because of him (my father) and my mother,” said Darrell Rarke according to the Greenville News. “He taught me how to fish, how to hunt how you enjoy life, how you are responsible.”

Armstrong told USA TODAY this week that her parents were simple country people who had five children and always looked for everyone. Her mother loved to cook a feast for the whole family, and her father “had a good heart” that quickly forgiven and asked for forgiveness.

“They were the family’s glue,” said Armstrong, adding that they missed the births of some of their eight grandchildren and five great -grandchildren since they were murdered. “He took that with him.”

She said she did not intend to take the execution, but her son Ricky Sims told the Greenville News that he would be there.

“He will pay for what he did,” said Sims. “He took two people away who would have done something for their family. They were the rock of our family … they don’t deserve it. “

Brad Keith Sigmon’s lawyers quote mental illnesses

Before the murders, Sigmon was “a hard worker and a loving brother who worked as a teenager in factory layers to ensure that his brothers and sisters could eat,” said his lawyer Gerald “Bo” in a statement.

He said that Sigmon became a “tortured” man because of a non -diagnosed mental illness that caused “irrational and impulsive episodes”, which he tried to treat with street medication.

“And this Brad, who had already struggled with organic brain damage and grief of his violent childhood, succumbed to a psychotic break,” said King. “The jury who condemned him had no idea how much his mental health was affected or that he was probably even incompetent to be on trial.”

Armstrong said that she and Sigmon were the best friends for five years before her romance began. Armstrong, who had three children at the time, said that Sigmon had trouble problems and that she would have hit her once, but she would never have imagined that he was capable of evil.

Since he was in prison, King said that Sigmon had been “transformed” into a repentite, God -loving man and a “peaceful, trustworthy presence in the death cell”.

“He serves his fellow prisoners as an informal chaplain,” said King. “He is a source of strength for his siblings and children. He is also health and does not pose a danger for anyone.”

More about the first execution of the fire brigade from the nation since 2010

In an explanation of USA Today, the Corrections Department of Corrections in South Carolina said that the Breit -Justice Intitut in Columbia was renovated to carry out the firing squad.

The inmate is shared in a metal chair in the corner of a room that is “not moved by the electrical chair of the state”, the department said in its shooting squad protocols, the USA.

The Firing Squad team – voluntary correction staff – and all stand behind a wall with invited rifles of 15 feet from the occupant. The wall will have an opening that is not visible from the witness room. “The inmate is strapped into the chair and a hood is placed over his head,” said the department. “A small target is laid by a member of the execution team via his heart. After the supervisor has read the execution order, the team will fire. After the shot, a doctor will examine the occupants. After the occupant has been declared dead, the curtain will be drawn and witnesses.”

Witnesses of the execution in which family members of the inmate and the victim are usually involved.

The department said that a ball -resistant glass was installed between the Chamber of Death and the witness room.

The modern history of the squad executions in the USA

Since deadly injection medications have become more difficult, the states with the death penalty have tried to expand their methods to controversy options such as firing groups and nitrogen gas, which were used for the first time in January 2024 in Alabama with the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith. Three other inmates in Alabama were carried out by nitrogen gas, since Louisiana will use the method to use the method this month, and Arkansas is now considering the takeover.

Five states – South Carolina Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and Idaho – have legalized firing squad as an execution method, most recently in 2023 Idaho.

The last inmate in the United States, which was killed by the shooting of the squad, was in 2010 when Utah Ronnie Lee Gardner executed because he had killed a man during a robbery. Both other Executions of the fire combat were in 1977 in Utah, Gary Mark Gilmore and John Albert Taylor in 1996.

One of the witnesses of Gardner’s execution included a reporter of Associated Press, who said that five voluntary prison employees with rifles of the caliber .30 were fired on him and aimed at a goal that was held over his breast when he was sitting in a chair. One of the rifles had a spaces, so that none of the volunteers knew whether they fired a fatal ball, reported AP.

Gardner was declared dead two minutes after the shots have been switched off for total as well as for fatal injection or nitrogen gas.

King, Sigmon’s lawyer, said in an explanation that the execution on Friday there is no justice.

“Everything about this barbaric, state-sanctioned atrocity of the election to the method of self-acting evil cruel,” he said. “We shouldn’t just be horrified – we should be angry.”

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