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 Jose Luis Villegas Jr., 39, is scheduled to be put to death with a
lethal dose of drugs after 6 p.m. CDT at the Texas death chamber in
Huntsville, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.
If his execution is carried out, Villegas would be the seventh
person executed in Texas this year and the 17th in the United
States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, an
organization that tracks executions.
Villegas confessed that the day of the killings he had consumed
about $200 of cocaine with his 24-year-old girlfriend, Erida Perez
Salazar, at the home she shared with her parents, according to court
documents.
After her mother, Alma Perez, 51, ordered Villegas to leave the
house, he stabbed her dozens of times with a kitchen knife and then
proceeded to a bedroom where he stabbed his girlfriend and her son
Jacob, 3, numerous times each, according to court records.
Villegas then left the house and drove off in Salazar's vehicle and
sold a television he stole from the home to buy more cocaine,
according to court documents.
He had planned to return to the house to kill himself with an
overdose of cocaine, but tried to flee when he saw police were
already there, according to court documents. He was caught by police
after a high-speed chase and foot pursuit.
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Texas has executed 514 people, more than a third of all executions
in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death
penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee;
editing by Lisa
Shumaker)
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