A South Carolina mass killer was executed by firing squad on Friday after his last-ditch attempt to avoid the death penalty was rejected.
Stephen Bryant, 44, was shot by three volunteers with rifles shortly after 6pm, more than 20 years after he killed three people during a vicious crime spree.
Residents in Sumter County were left terrified by his eight day rampage, which saw him taunt police by writing a message in his victim’s blood.
Days before his execution, Bryant petitioned the South Carolina Supreme Court to stay his death penalty as he sought to blame his sickening crimes on brain damage caused by his mother drinking and doing drugs while pregnant with him.
But his fate was sealed as the court ruled that even if Bryant was found to suffer Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, it would not change his death sentence.
He became the third person in South Carolina to die by firing squad this year, a method that he chose due to issues obtaining lethal injection drugs. He also had the option to die by the electric chair.
Bryant chose the firing squad, which saw three volunteers shoot him in the heart from a distance of around 15 feet.
The firing squad method sparked controversy earlier this year after witnesses to the execution of killer Mikal Mahdi, 42, said he suffered excruciating pain when the shooters missed his heart.
South Carolina mass killer Steven Bryant, 44, was executed by firing squad on Friday after his last-ditch attempt to avoid the death penalty was rejected
Bryant had languished on death row since 2008, when he pleaded guilty to shooting four men, three fatally, in an eight-day crime spree in 2004.
Although Bryant admitted to killing three men, his death sentence was the result of just one carried out during the spree, the murder of Willard ‘TJ’ Tietjen, 62, who Bryant ambushed and killed in his remote home in Sumter County.
Bryant targeted Tietjen at random, approaching his secluded home and claiming to have had car trouble before shooting him and leaving a sickening crime scene for investigators.
The then 23-year-old killer, remained in Tietjen’s property for some time, ransacking his home, smoking cigarettes, using his computer, and then writing ‘victim number four in two weeks, catch me if you can’ in his blood.
Bryant also answered a call from Tietjen’s wife and daughter while he was in the home, identifying himself as the ‘prowler’ and telling them that Tietjen was dead.
The two other men Bryant killed, Cliff Gainey and Christopher Burgess, were picked up by him and offered rides before he shot them by the side of the road when they went to urinate.
He also shot victim Clinton Brown in the same manner as Gainey and Burgess, but he survived the attack.
According to an archival WISTV article from 2004, Bryant was arrested at his girlfriend’s home after he was identified as the triggerman in the series of shootings in rural South Carolina.
Bryant was 23-years-old when he shot four men, three fatally, in an eight-day crime spree in 2004, which included writing ‘victim number four in two weeks, catch me if you can’ in his final victim’s blood
After his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court, Byrant became the seventh inmate put to death in South Carolina since the state restarted executions September last year
A prisoner is killed by a firing squad while they’re strapped to a metal chair 15 feet away
Sumter County Sheriff Tommy Sims said at the time that Bryant left the taunting message inside Tietjen’s home telling deputies to ‘catch me if you can’.
‘And I’m happy to say that law enforcement has responded to that challenge and we have caught him,’ Sims announced at a press conference.
The sheriff said that Bryant had been released from prison on burglary charges not long before his crime spree, and that he carried out a series of robberies and other attacks while on the loose.
Bryant’s lawyers argued in court that he should be spared the death penalty because he had endured a turbulent childhood, beginning with his mother drinking heavily while pregnant with him.
He had then been sexually abused by four male relatives as a child, and his attorneys said he had been troubled by the abuse in the months before the murders.
Bryant had reportedly begged for help from a probation officer and his aunt, and he had tried to overcome his mental health issues by abusing meth and smoking joints sprayed with bug killer.
Bryant, seen in a mugshot from 2021, chose to be put to death by firing squad
His aunt testified at his trial: ‘He was very upset. He looked like he was being tortured. It’s like his soul was just laid wide open.
‘In his eyes you could see he was hurting and suffering and he was living the abuse over again as it was coming out.’
Byrant became the seventh inmate put to death in South Carolina since the state restarted executions September last year.
