(Reuters) - A Texas man was executed on Thursday evening by lethal injection for a brutal triple shooting in a small town that left a 24-year-old man dead.
Prosecutors say Beunka Adams and another man robbed a convenience store in the small east Texas town of Rusk in September 2002.
Adams herded two female employees of the store, Candace Driver and Nikki Dement, along with Kenneth Vandever, who was described as having mental disabilities and who did odd jobs around the store, into Driver's car, according to court documents. He drove them to a pea field where he raped Dement, and then opened fire on all three victims with a shotgun.
Adams, 29, was the fifth person executed in Texas this year and the 17th put to death this year in the United States.