Texas’ oldest death row inmate executed by lethal injection

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Texas’ oldest death row inmate was executed by lethal injection on Thursday, nearly 32 years after the fatal shooting of a Houston police officer during a traffic stop.

>> Read more trending news

Carl Wayne Buntion, 78, was executed at 6:39 p.m. CDT at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, KHOU-TV reported.

He was sentenced to death for the June 1990 fatal shooting of Houston Police Department officer James Irby, 37, who had been with the force for nearly 20 years, according to the television station.

An appeals court vacated Buntion’s sentence in 2009, but another jury resentenced him to death three years later, according to The Associated Press.

According to court records, Irby pulled over a vehicle for a minor traffic violation in Houston, KRPC-TV reported. Buntion was a passenger in the car, driven by John Killingsworth, according to the television station.

John Killingsworth was driving and Buntion was in the passenger seat. According to police, Irby asked the driver to step to the back of the car.

While the two men were talking, police said Buntion slipped out of the passenger side of the vehicle and shot Irby one time in the head and two times in the back, KPRC reported.

“I was always prepared for him to get hurt on his motorcycle, I wasn’t prepared for him to be shot down in cold blood,” Maura Irby, the officer’s widow, said in a 1990 interview. Irby’s children were 3 and 1 at the time of his death.

“He was ready to fill out the paperwork and stay home and open a feed store,” Maura Irby, now 60, told KHOU. “He wanted to be the dad that was there to go to all the ballgames and the father-daughter dances. He was a super guy, the love of my life.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon declined to halt Buntion’s execution, according to the television station.

©2022 Cox Media Group