A death row inmate chose three very basic food items for his last meal before being executed for slashing dead his girlfriend’s mother.
Taberon Dave Honie, 48, indulged on a cheeseburger, fries and a milkshake at 4.30pm on Wednesday before receiving a lethal injection, Utah Department of Corrections spokesman Glen Mills said.
He had the classic American meal at the prison campus while with family members.
Honie had begun his day shortly after 6am, getting moved to an observation room at Utah State Prison in Salt Lake City and sleeping there for a couple hours until he was served a breakfast sandwich.
As Honie was injected with two doses of pentobarbital just after midnight on Thursday, he mouthed ‘I love you’ to watching family members and tapped his foot.
He gasped as the drugs entered his body through IVs and his torso jolted on the execution table. His skin turned a pale blue and he was motionless for a few minutes, then pronounced dead at 12.25am Thursday.
Honie was put to death for slitting the throat of substance abuse counselor Claudia Benn, 49, in her Cedar City home on July 9, 1998.
He was drunk and fighting with his girlfriend, Carol Pikyavit, who was staying at her mom’s house along with the daughter they shared, court records showed.
Honie said that if Pikyavit did not make time to see him, he would kill everyone in the home and take their daughter away. But Pikyavit did not take his words seriously and went to work, according to the records.
When Honie got to the home, he started arguing with Benn, who was babysitting three granddaughters. Honie claimed that Benn began calling him names and that he broke through a sliding glass door to scare her.
Benn grabbed a butcher knife, which Honie took and moved toward her throat,according to the records. Honie claimed that they tripped and that Benn fell on the blade.
Cops arrived to find Honie covered in blood and he admitted he ‘stabbed and killed her with a knife’, according to the documents. She had ‘stabbing and cutting wounds’ on her genitals and neck.
Honie had told the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole in July regarding his crime: ‘Yes, I’m a monster.’
‘The only thing that kept me going all these years, the only thing I know 100%, this would never happen if I was in my right mind,’ he said.
‘I make no excuses.’
Honie’s request for reprieve was denied by the board, and he became the first inmate to be executed in Utah since 2010 and the 12th in the US this year.
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