May 20 (UPI) -- Texas executed a 49-year-old death row inmate for the gruesome murder of a grandmother during a robbery in 2012, making him the second person to be executed in the United States on Tuesday and the 18th person this year.
Matthew Lee Johnson was killed by lethal injection Tuesday evening at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice In Huntsville, located about 70 miles north of Houston. He was pronounced dead at 6:53 CDT, Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.
Johnson was executed for killing Nancy Harris, 76, on the morning of May 20, 2012. Harris had just opened the Fina Whip-In convenience store in Garland, where she had been a longtime employee, when Johnson entered carrying a lighter and a plastic bottle of lighter fluid.
According to court documents, he poured the lighter fluid on Harris and robbed her of her rings and the store of two packs of cigarettes and money from the cash register. He then set her on fire, and stole a packet of candy on the way out. Harris would die five days later from her injuries.
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