[SIZE="4"]Man put to death in Oklahoma for killing Japanese student[/SIZE]
The Associated Press wrote:
An Oklahoma man was executed Tuesday for throwing a firebomb that killed a university student from Japan more than 10 years ago.
Terry Lyn Short was injected with a lethal combination of three chemicals at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and was pronounced dead at 6:08 p.m. . .
. . . Short raised his head and acknowledged the presence of several family members, but declined an opportunity to deliver his last words into a microphone that dangled over his head.
"I have nothing to say," Short said.
. . . Short was convicted of killing 22-year-old Ken Yamamoto more than 13 years ago. Yamamoto lived one floor above Short's ex-girlfriend and died after Short threw a gasoline-filled bottle into her apartment that ignited the building.
Investigators believe Yamamoto, a senior art major at Oklahoma City University, was sleeping when the blaze erupted in the early morning hours on Jan. 8, 1995, at the Royal Chateau Apartments in south Oklahoma City. By the time he awoke and tried to escape, the entire unit was engulfed in flames.
When rescue workers reached Yamamoto, his body was covered with severe burns. He died less than two days later at an Oklahoma City hospital.
. . . Yamamoto came to Oklahoma as an exchange student from Japan in 1989 and graduated high school in Del City, an Oklahoma City suburb.
His host family in high school remembered Yamamoto as a hardworking, dedicated student who was shy when he first arrived in Oklahoma, but quickly learned English and grew to love America.
"He bleached his hair blonde. He wore stars-and-stripes shirts. He loved rock 'n' roll," Myles Martin, Yamamoto's host brother, said during a clemency hearing last month. "He did not deserve to die, and what a horrible way to die." . . . more
