Tennessee killer Edmund Zagorski says ‘let’s rock’ before execution by electric chair – the state’s first since 2007
- Edmund Zagorski was convicted of killing two men during a drug deal in 1983
- He was the first US convict in five years to be put to death by electrocution
A Tennessee inmate’s final words were “let’s rock” moments before he became the first man executed in the electric chair in that state since 2007, put to death for the killings of two men during a drug deal-turned-robbery decades ago.
Edmund Zagorski, 63, was pronounced dead at 7.26pm on Thursday at a Nashville maximum-security prison, officials said.
Asked if he had any last words in the death chamber, the inmate said, “Let’s rock” soon before the execution was carried out.
Reporters witnessing the scene said at a news briefing afterwards that he alternated between grimacing and smiling as he lay strapped down and that a sponge was placed on his head and then a shroud over his face.
The witnesses said the inmate’s fists then clenched when the electricity began flowing and his body appeared to rise, but he did not move once the execution procedure was over.
In opting for the electric chair over a lethal injection as Tennessee allowed him, Zagorski had argued it would be a quicker and less painful way to die.