A CONVICTED cop killer was executed by a firing squad in South Carolina as officials ramp up their return to the death penalty.
Mikal Mahdi, 42, was shot dead inside Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia at 6.05pm on Friday – marking the state’s second rare execution in just over a month.
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He was sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of off-duty public safety officer Captain James Myers, who was shot nine times and set on fire in a shed where he had married his wife just 15 months earlier.
Mahdi – who had also killed a North Carolina convenience store clerk three days before gunning down Myers – chose the rare method over the electric chair or lethal injection, fearing being “burned and mutilated” or “suffering a lingering death”, his attorney said.
He cried out and flexed his arms as the bullets struck, then groaned twice more before taking a final breath 80 seconds later.
A doctor pronounced him dead four minutes after the shots were fired.
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