A former doctor, who killed four people school in revenge has been given the death penalty.
The Indiana doctor was found guilty on the death of the four who had a connection to a Nebraska medical school, where he worked before and given the verdict on Friday.
The four victims also include an 11-year-old son of a physician William Hunter, a Creighton University School of Medicine faculty member. William reportedly had played a vital role in the termination of the doctor from a residency program around 17 years ago.
Anthony Garcia, 45, entered the courtroom in a wheelchair on Friday morning where he appeared to be asleep while the panel of three-judges sentenced him to death.
In 2016, Garcia was convicted of stabbing 11-year-old Thomas Hunter and the family housekeeper, 57 to death in 2008. Later Garcia was also found guilty on other two killings that occurred five years later. On Mother's Day 2013, the Creighton pathology doctor Roger Brumback, and his wife, Mary was killed in their Omaha home.
Prosecutors said Garcia blamed Hunter and Brumback responsible for his firing from Creighton's pathology residency program in 2001.
Some of the victims' relatives testified Friday which also includes Jeff Sherman, whose mother was shot fatally in 2008 alongside Hunter's son. Sherman said,
I'm left with constant images from courtroom pictures of what happened to my mom. I can't ever get those images out of my head.
Investigators said Garcia stabbed 11-year-old Thomas Hunter and Shirlee Sherman, 57, at the family's home in Omaha where police were unable to find a suspect in the killings. And the case cooled down within years. But the scenario changed in 2013 when police found similarities in the previous two murders and in the murder of Dr. Brumback and his wife, Mary, and police quickly eyed Garcia as a suspect.
It is the second execution in Nebraska in more than 20 years. Last month, Carey Dean Moore was executed by lethal injection for the 1979 shooting deaths of two Omaha cab drivers.
Friday's hearing was briefly interrupted after the lead judge, Gary Randall suffered a medical episode and was carried out from the court on a stretcher. Then the Gage County District Judge Rick Schreiner explained that Randall had undergone a medical procedure the previous week which caused a severe back pain.
