A man who killed five people and asked to be executed is being executed in Alabama

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — Alabama executed a man Thursday who admitted doing so five people killed with an ax and a gun during a drug-fueled rampage in 2016 and dropped his appeals to move forward with his lethal injection.

Derrick Dearman, 36, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. Thursday at Holman Prison in southern Alabama. He pleaded guilty in a crime spree that began when he broke into the home where his estranged girlfriend had taken refuge.

Strapped to a gurney in the Alabama execution chamber, Dearman spoke to the victims' family members and his own family. “Forgive me. This is not for me. This is for you,” he said to the victims' families, adding: “I have taken so much with me.” Finally, he said to his own family: “I love you all. “

Dearman dropped his appeals earlier this year. “I am guilty,” he wrote in a letter to a judge in April, adding that “it is not fair to the victims or their families to further delay the justice they so rightly deserve.”

Dearman's execution was one of two scheduled Thursday in the United States. Robert Roberson was set to be the first person in the country to be executed for murder related to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter. However, a judge granted a request from Texas lawmakers delay takes place his execution. The Texas Attorney General's Office was expected to quickly appeal the judge's order.

Dearman's execution was Alabama's fifth execution of 2024. Two were carried out by Nitrogen gas. The other two involved lethal injection, which remains the state's primary method.

Killed on Aug. 20, 2016, at the home near Citronelle, about 30 miles north of Mobile: Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Caleb Reed, 23; and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22.

Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, was pregnant when she was killed. Turner, who was married to Randall, shared the house with the Reeds. Brown, Randall's brother, was also living there the night of the murder. Dearman's girlfriend survived. Turner and Randall had their three-month-old son with them when they were attacked, but the baby was unharmed.

The day before the murder, Joseph Turner, the brother of Dearman's girlfriend, took her to his home after Dearman was abusive toward her, according to a judge's ruling.

Dearman had shown up at the house several times that evening, asking to see his girlfriend, and was told he couldn't stay there. According to the judge's ruling, he returned sometime after 3 a.m. when all the victims were asleep. He made his way through the house and attacked the victims with an ax he took from the yard and then with a gun he found in the house, prosecutors said. He forced his surviving girlfriend to get in the car with him and drive to Mississippi.

According to a judge's 2018 sentencing order, Dearman turned himself in to authorities at his father's request.

As he was taken to prison, Dearman blamed the rampage on drugs and told reporters that was the case high methamphetamine use when he entered the house, and that “the drugs made me think things were happening that weren't really there.”

Dearman initially pleaded not guilty, but changed his plea to guilty after firing his lawyers. Because it was a murder case, Alabama law required a jury to hear the evidence and determine whether the state proved the case. The jury found Dearman guilty and unanimously recommended the death penalty.

Before withdrawing his appeal, Dearman's lawyers argued that his trial attorney had not done enough to establish Dearman's mental illness and “lack of competency to plead guilty.” The Equal Justice Initiative, which represented Dearman in the appeal, wrote on its website Wednesday that Dearman “suffered from a lifelong and serious mental illness, including bipolar disorder with psychotic features.”

Dearman had been on death row since 2018.

In the hours before his execution by lethal injection, Dearman was visited by his sons, his sister and his father. His last meal was a seafood platter that he brought from a local restaurant.