TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday signed a demise warrant for Anthony Wainwright, who was convicted of kidnapping a girl in 1994 from a Winn-Dixie grocery store parking zone in Lake Metropolis and raping and murdering her in rural Hamilton County.
Wainwright, who had escaped from a North Carolina jail days earlier than killing 23-year-old Carmen Gayheart, is scheduled to be put to demise by deadly injection on June 10 at Florida State Jail.
A 1995 sentencing order by Circuit Choose E. Vernon Douglas described the homicide as “extraordinarily depraved, evil and vile, in that the sufferer of this case was kidnapped at gunpoint whereas putting groceries in her car, as she was en route to choose up her two young children at a day care heart.”
It mentioned Gayheart was “made to ponder her destiny” for greater than an hour as she was pushed to the place she was strangled and shot twice at the back of the top with a .22-caliber rifle.
Wainwright and a co-defendant, Richard Hamilton, have been arrested the following day after a shootout with police in Mississippi, in keeping with a doc filed final yr on the U.S. Supreme Courtroom by the Florida Lawyer Common’s Workplace in an unsuccessful enchantment by Wainwright.
Wainwright, 54, is scheduled to be the sixth inmate executed this yr in Florida. 4 males have been executed, and Glen Rogers is slated to be put to demise Thursday within the 1995 homicide of a girl in a Tampa motel room. The Wainwright demise warrant got here a day after the Florida Supreme Courtroom rejected an enchantment by Rogers.
Previous appeals by Wainwright have been unsuccessful, however the Florida Supreme Courtroom on Friday issued a schedule for what could possibly be a remaining try by his attorneys to spare him from execution.
The doc filed final yr on the U.S. Supreme Courtroom by the Lawyer Common’s Workplace mentioned Wainwright and Hamilton escaped from a jail in Newport, N.C., stole a Cadillac and burglarized a house, the place they took two rifles.
After driving to Florida, they selected April 27, 1994, to steal one other automobile as a result of the Cadillac was overheating, in keeping with the courtroom doc. They drove into the Winn-Dixie parking zone in Lake Metropolis and noticed Gayheart loading groceries right into a Ford Bronco.
Hamilton compelled her into the Bronco at gunpoint and drove away, with Wainwright following within the Cadillac. They subsequently ditched the Cadillac and headed north on Interstate 75 earlier than pulling off right into a wooded space, the place Gayheart was raped and killed, the doc mentioned.
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