Execution set for Thursday

TOLEDO (AP) — No one really knows if Vernon Smith meant to shoot and kill a carryout owner who had a 1-year-old daughter at home and a baby on the way.

It’s what he said afterward that might be why he’s set to be executed Thursday.

Smith, 37, was sentenced to death in the 1993 killing of Sohail Darwish, 29, an immigrant raised in Saudi Arabia who bought the corner store so he could provide for his young family.

Smith and two friends planned the robbery. Inside the store, they grabbed some beer, and Smith pulled out a gun, telling Darwish to empty the cash register and hand over his wallet. As the store owner grabbed for his money, Smith shot him once in the chest.

Back in their getaway car, Smith’s friends told investigators that he said he shot the man in the arm because he “moved too slow” and that Darwish “shouldn’t be in our neighborhood with a store, no way.” Then Smith added: “I forgot the beer.”

“The callousness of it was pretty incredible,” said Chris Anderson, a Lucas County assistant prosecutor. Darwish, who came to the U.S. when he was a teen, rarely took a day off, worked 14-hour days and allowed customers to give him IOUs.

If the death sentence is carried out, Smith would become the second inmate executed with just one drug in the U.S The state in early December executed the first inmate, Kenneth Biros of Trumbull County, using the new method.