
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 27, 1990                   TAG: 9004270834
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: COLUMBIA, S.C.                                LENGTH: Short

KILLER REMORSEFUL BEFORE EXECUTION

A thief who killed four people and left another maimed for life in a 1979 rampage was executed today.

"I'm sorry," Ronald "Rusty" Woomer, 35, said in a low, shaky voice from the electric chair immediately before being put to death for the slaying of convenience store clerk Della Louise Sellers, one of the victims.

"I claim Jesus Christ as my savior. I only wish everyone could feel the love I feel for him," Woomer said.

Prison officials switched on the current at 1:05 a.m. and Woomer was pronounced dead seven minutes later, said William Catoe, the Corrections Department's deputy commissioner for operations.

"It was too easy. It was too easy," said Don Sellers, the husband of one victim, after witnessing the execution.

A cheer erupted from a waiting crowd of about 80 death penalty proponents - including relatives of Woomer's victims - as the hearse bearing the body left the death house.

"I'm glad to know Woomer won't ever be on the streets again to harm anybody else," said 50-year-old Marion Wright, the brother of Earldean Wright, another of Woomer's victims.

Wright said he was "not happy, just relieved." He said he didn't cheer.

Also about 1 a.m., a group of about 50 death-penalty foes ended a candlelight vigil in front of the governor's mansion.

Woomer's death sentence was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court denied requests for a stay and Gov. Carroll Campbell turned down a plea for clemency Thursday.

Woomer was the 123rd person put to death since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

by CNB