ATMORE − Alabama executed Derrick Dearman Thursday evening by lethal injection for the brutal killings of five members of his then-girlfriend’s family in Mobile County in 2016. It was the state’s second execution in a span of three weeks.
Court records show he used an ax, a .45 cal. handgun and a shotgun in the massacre at a home in Citronelle, which is about 30 miles north of Mobile. One of the victims, Chelsea Marie Reed, was five months pregnant.
The execution happened in the death chamber of the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, about an hour and a half south of Montgomery. Dearman had fired his attorneys from the Equal Justice Initiative earlier in the year and asked all appeals on his behalf be halted. He also mailed letters to Attorney General Steve Marshal and Gov. Kay Ivey asking that his execution proceed.
The execution
Five media witnesses and five witnesses for Dearman were led into the observation room about 5:45 p.m. There are a total of three observations rooms to the death chamber, the other two reserved for victims’ family and a room for state witnesses.