John William King, 44, was put to death by lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary
John William King. File Pic/AFP
An avowed white supremacist convicted of a notorious racist murder – chaining a black man to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him to his death – was executed on Wednesday in the US state of Texas.
John William King, 44, was put to death by lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary. He was one of three white men convicted of carrying out the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., one of the most gruesome racist killings in recent US history.
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Lawrence Brewer was executed in 2011 while Shawn Berry – who cooperated with investigators – was given life in prison. Byrd was alive for some two miles (3.2 kilometers) while being dragged along the road and was decapitated when his body hit a concrete drain pipe, a pathologist testified during King's trial.
In another incident, a man was arrested in the US on charges of hate crime after he allegedly punched a Sikh clerk and threw hot coffee on him at a shop in California, believing that the victim was a Muslim. According to the store's CCTV footage, the man dressed in black and identified as John Crain, entered the 7-Eleven convenience store in Marysville.
Moments later, the Sikh clerk emerged and the suspect attacked him near the front door of the shop, punching him on his face and throwing hot coffee on him before fleeing from the spot. The victim suffered injuries on his face and is reported to be recovering. The Sikh clerk later told the officers that the suspect had prepared a cup of coffee and tried to leave without paying, according to a police statement.
Later on that day, law enforcement personnel responded to another case of assault in an area and found the suspect walking away from the scene which matched his description from the earlier incident based on the CCTV footage. Subsequently, the man was arrested.
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