Faced with the death penalty he took the opportunity to make one final brag.
A gangster who killed a five-year-old girl and her grandmother boasted he was ‘still a soldier’ as he was put to death by lethal injection.
Erick Davila, 31, who shot the pair dead at a children’s birthday party, was executed at Texas’ execution chamber in Huntsville.
In his last statement, Davila was quoted by prisons officials as saying: “I might have lost the fight but I’m still a soldier.
“I still love you all. To my supporters and family, y’all hold it down.”
Davila opened fire at a children’s party in 2008, believing a rival gang member was present, however, his barrage of bullets resulted in the killing of Annette Stevenson, 48, and her granddaughter, Queshawn Stevenson.
He also wounded three more children and another woman at the Hannah Montana-themed party. According to prosecutors, Davila was a member of the ‘Bloods’ street gang.
He was convicted of the harrowing crime in 2009, telling investigators he intended to “have a shoot-’em-up” and kill the father of Queshawn Stevenson, a rival gang member.
He maintained throughout his trial that he only meant to kill his gangland rival. “I wasn’t aiming at the kids or the woman and don’t know where the woman came from,” he wrote in a statement to police.
“I don’t know the fat dude’s name, but I know what he looks like, so I recognized his face.”
An appeal from Davila’s lawyers was rejected by the US Supreme Court 30 minutes before the punishment was carried out.
“We don’t know what is going to come out of a person’s mouth when they’re on death row,” Tyron Shaw, whose aunt and cousin were killed in the gunfire, said following the administration of the injection. “The damage has been done. … As I told my family, you just expect the best and prepare for the worst.
“We know that justice has been served, justice has been done. This is something that we would continue to deal with the rest of our lives. We would never get over it. We would never forget it, but we can cope a little bit better.”
