Violence and sudden. What a shooting squad through my eyes

Colombia, S. None of the ten preceded me to watch the death of Brad Sigmon in the shooting team on Friday night.

I may now be unique among American correspondents: I have seen three different ways – nine fatal injection and implement an electric chair. I can still hear the fall after 21 years.

As a journalist you want to prepare for yourself for a task. You are looking at a state. I read about the topic.

In two weeks since I knew how SigMon will die, I read the shootings and the damage that the bullets could have. I looked at pictures of an autopsy of the last man who was called to death by the state, in Utah in 2010.

I was also subjected to his trial version, including how prosecutors said that it took less than two minutes to hit my father’s ex -girlfriend nine times in his head with a baseball, and going between them in different rooms of their house in Greenville in 2001 until they died.

But you don’t know everything when some implementation protocols are kept secret, and it is impossible to know what can be expected when you did not see a person shooting at a close distance directly in front of you.

The shooting band is definitely faster – and more violent – than deadly injection. It is also tense. My heart began to bomb a little after Sigon’s lawyer read his final statement. The cap was placed on the head of SigMon, and the shadow employee opened the black clouds that protect as the volunteer archers were in the three prison system.

After about two minutes, they shot. There was no warning or countdown. The sudden crack of guns was astonished. The white goal with the Red Bullseye was on his chest, and to stand on the black prison suit, immediately disappeared with the outbreak of SigMon’s body completely.

He reminded me of what happened to the prisoner 21 years ago when electricity shook his body.

I tried to track, at the same time, the digital clock on the wall to my right, will go to my left, and the small rectangular window with the archers and witnesses in front of me.

A rough red spot appeared around the size of a small grip where Segon was shot. Move his chest two or three times. Outside a rift, there was no sound.

A doctor came out in less than a minute, and it took another minute to examine it. Sejun’s death was announced at 6:08 pm

Then we left through the same section that we reached.

The sun was set. The sky was a beautiful pink pink, on the blatant opposite with the lights of the death room, the gray fire division and the walls that mentioned me at the Office of the Doctor of the seventies.

The death room is less than five minutes’ drive from the correction department headquarters along a highway in the suburbs. I always look at the window on the drive again from every implementation. There is a pasture with cows behind a fence on the one hand, and on the other side, I can see in the distance the razor of the prison.

Armed prison staff were everywhere. We sat in vehicles outside the death room when I think it was about 15 minutes, but I cannot say certainty because my watch and my mobile phone and everything else was transferred for safety, except for a pillow and a pen.

On my right, I saw the slim outlets banned in the death row in South Carolina. There were 28 prisoners there earlier on Friday, and now there is 27.

This decreased from August 31. After stopping for 13 years while South Carolina struggled to obtain drugs for fatal injection, the state resumed executions. Prisoners may choose between injections, electric shock or fire division.

I saw Freddy Owens, who was executed on September 20. She closed her eyes with every witness in the room.

I saw Richard Moore dying on November 1, quietly looking at the side cells as his lawyer, who became close to him during the fighting for his life for a decade.

I was also there, when Marion Powman Junior died on January 31, a small smile on his face turning into his lawyer, then closed his eyes and waited.

I remember other executions as well. I have seen family members of the victims staring at a killer on Gurney. I saw a mother who tasted tears as she watched her son dies, near touch if the glass and bars are not on the way.

Such a return in 2004, I will not forget the rift on Friday and this goal disappears. Also engraved in my mind: they will speak or go towards his lawyer, trying to tell him that he is fine before the cover continues.

I will likely return to Broad River Correctional Foundation on April 11. Two other men at the time of death outside the appeal, and the state’s Supreme Court appears to be ready to determine the date of his death at five -week periods of time.

They will be the twelfth and thirteenth men you saw killed by South Carolina. When it ended, I will see more than a quarter of the state’s executions since the death penalty.

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Collins was one of three media witnesses to execute the shooting squad. He witnessed 11 executions in South Carolina during his nearly 25 -year career with Associated Press.