A man who was convicted of killing two college students after confessing to his FBI agent father was executed in Georgia, apologising to the families of both victims before being injected at a state prison.
Andrew Allen Cook, 38, was pronounced dead at 11-22 p.m. Thursday, about 14 minutes after he was injected with the sedative pentobarbital. He was the first inmate to be executed since the state changed its procedure in July from a three-drug combination to a single dose.
With his last words, he apologised to the families of Mercer University students Grant Patrick Hendrickson, 22, and Michele Lee Cartagena, 19, who were shot several times as they sat in a car at Lake Juliette, south of Atlanta, on Jan. 2, 1995. He said what he did was senseless.
“I’m sorry,” Cook said as he was strapped to a gurney. “I’m not going to ask you to forgive me. I can’t even do it myself.”
The Georgia Appeals Court on Wednesday temporarily stayed Cook’s execution to consider a challenge to the state’s lethal injection procedure. But the Georgia Supreme Court lifted the stay Thursday and all other appeals were exhausted.
Cook wasn’t charged until more than two years after the killings. He confessed to his father, a Macon FBI agent who ended up testifying at his son’s trial.
As a law enforcement officer, John Cook said he was forced to call his supervisor and contacted the Monroe County sheriff.
At the trial, as he walked away from the stand, the distraught father mouthed “I’m sorry” to the victims’ families who were sitting on the front row of the courtroom. Several members of both families acknowledged his apology.
