‘Texas 7’ member executed 18 years after cop’s murder

Texas executed a man on Tuesday who, along with six others known as the ‘Texas 7’, killed a police officer during a 2000 crime spree before being arrested thanks in part to the television programme America’s Most Wanted. Joseph Garcia, 47, was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6.43pm in the death chamber in Huntsville. Sentenced to 50 years in prison for killing a friend during a fight, Garcia and six other inmates at the Connally high-security prison in southern Texas participated in an infamous escape. They killed Aubrey Hawkins, a young police officer who had been called in for reinforcement and who was showered with bullets and hit by a 4x4 plank of wood.