Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 10, 2006 19:55:23 GMT -5
Execution set for Tuesday in '93 rape, slaying of 2 teens at park
It wasn't news to anyone that Derrick Sean O'Brien was bad news. He fought often at school, once breaking a kid's jaw. Lots of times he was drunk. Sometimes he carried a knife. He was full of bluster about his prowess as a car thief.
But it was in 1993 that O'Brien hit rock bottom. In January of that year, O'Brien later admitted, he murdered and tried to rape Patricia Lopez, a 27-year-old mother of 2 young children, in Melrose Park.
And on June 24, 1993, he took part in the brutal gang rapes and murders of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pea, 16, after the girls stumbled into a drunken midnight gang initiation rite in T.C. Jester Park.
Tuesday, O'Brien, 31, is scheduled to be executed for his role in that crime.
The death date is the killer's 2nd this year. In May, O'Brien received a brief stay as judges considered his claim that death by injection is cruel and unusual punishment. O'Brien's attorney, Catherine Burnett, an associate dean at the South Texas College of Law, filed a new appeal on his behalf with the U.S. Supreme Court.
"I hope the son of a pregnant dog rots in hell," Ertman's father, Randy, said last week. "He deserves it."
"It doesn't make me happy," Pea's father, Adolfo, said in a recent
interview. "But this is the punishment he was given, and it's justifiable.... I kind of feel numb in a way, knowing that I've been waiting so long for this day to come. ... I've been looking forward to this for a long time."
The murders of Ertman and Pea rocked the city in a way that few deaths could.
The Waltrip High School students, balanced at that awkward point between childhood and young womanhood, spent the hours before their deaths at a poolside party at a northwest Houston apartment complex.
As their midnight curfew approached, they debated the best way to Pea's home. Their normal route would have taken half an hour, but they chose a well-known shortcut down the railroad tracks through the park.
Minutes after the girls left the party, they were intercepted by O'Brien and five other members of the loose-knit gang, who had just concluded a track-side initiation rite. The girls were pulled from the tracks, raped and strangled. Court testimony revealed that O'Brien grunted with exertion as he tightened a belt around Ertman's neck.
Then, after stomping on the girls' throats, the killers divided the
victims' belongings.
O'Brien was at the crime scene 4 days later when police, alerted to the bodies' location by the brother of a gang member, began their investigation. Unobtrusively, the killer stood among spectators who gathered in the park. Ertman's father also was in the crowd.
Days later, O'Brien was arrested. He will be the 1st of the convicted gang members to be put to death.
Others facing execution are Peter Anthony Cantu, described as the gang's leader, and Jose Ernesto Medellin, both 31. Death sentences for 2 others Efrain Perez and Raul Omar Villarreal were commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that those who were minors when they committed murders could not be executed.
The 6th gang member, Venacio Medellin, who was 14 at the time of the murders and testified against the others, received a 40-year sentence.
"Don't say time makes things better," Pea's father said. "It never goes away. It's never going to go away. The hurt is still the same. I still find myself crying just out of the blue."
(source: Houston Chronicle)
It wasn't news to anyone that Derrick Sean O'Brien was bad news. He fought often at school, once breaking a kid's jaw. Lots of times he was drunk. Sometimes he carried a knife. He was full of bluster about his prowess as a car thief.
But it was in 1993 that O'Brien hit rock bottom. In January of that year, O'Brien later admitted, he murdered and tried to rape Patricia Lopez, a 27-year-old mother of 2 young children, in Melrose Park.
And on June 24, 1993, he took part in the brutal gang rapes and murders of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pea, 16, after the girls stumbled into a drunken midnight gang initiation rite in T.C. Jester Park.
Tuesday, O'Brien, 31, is scheduled to be executed for his role in that crime.
The death date is the killer's 2nd this year. In May, O'Brien received a brief stay as judges considered his claim that death by injection is cruel and unusual punishment. O'Brien's attorney, Catherine Burnett, an associate dean at the South Texas College of Law, filed a new appeal on his behalf with the U.S. Supreme Court.
"I hope the son of a pregnant dog rots in hell," Ertman's father, Randy, said last week. "He deserves it."
"It doesn't make me happy," Pea's father, Adolfo, said in a recent
interview. "But this is the punishment he was given, and it's justifiable.... I kind of feel numb in a way, knowing that I've been waiting so long for this day to come. ... I've been looking forward to this for a long time."
The murders of Ertman and Pea rocked the city in a way that few deaths could.
The Waltrip High School students, balanced at that awkward point between childhood and young womanhood, spent the hours before their deaths at a poolside party at a northwest Houston apartment complex.
As their midnight curfew approached, they debated the best way to Pea's home. Their normal route would have taken half an hour, but they chose a well-known shortcut down the railroad tracks through the park.
Minutes after the girls left the party, they were intercepted by O'Brien and five other members of the loose-knit gang, who had just concluded a track-side initiation rite. The girls were pulled from the tracks, raped and strangled. Court testimony revealed that O'Brien grunted with exertion as he tightened a belt around Ertman's neck.
Then, after stomping on the girls' throats, the killers divided the
victims' belongings.
O'Brien was at the crime scene 4 days later when police, alerted to the bodies' location by the brother of a gang member, began their investigation. Unobtrusively, the killer stood among spectators who gathered in the park. Ertman's father also was in the crowd.
Days later, O'Brien was arrested. He will be the 1st of the convicted gang members to be put to death.
Others facing execution are Peter Anthony Cantu, described as the gang's leader, and Jose Ernesto Medellin, both 31. Death sentences for 2 others Efrain Perez and Raul Omar Villarreal were commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that those who were minors when they committed murders could not be executed.
The 6th gang member, Venacio Medellin, who was 14 at the time of the murders and testified against the others, received a 40-year sentence.
"Don't say time makes things better," Pea's father said. "It never goes away. It's never going to go away. The hurt is still the same. I still find myself crying just out of the blue."
(source: Houston Chronicle)