Thomas Loden, the man who sexually assaulted and killed a teenage girl Leesa Marie Gray in the year 2000, was executed by the state through lethal injection protocol in Mississippi on Wednesday, December 14, 2022.

He became the second prisoner to be executed by the State in the last 10 years.

Leesa Gray, the 16-year-old girl’s mother Wanda Farris attended the execution. She said, “I don’t particularly want to see somebody die,” she said. “But I do believe in the death penalty. I do believe in justice.”

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Who was Thomas Loden Jr.?

Thomas Edwin Loden Jr. or Thomas Loden was a 58-year-old who was pronounced dead on December 14, 2022. He was a former American Marines corps recruiter.

He was on the death penalty since 2001 for charges of rape, capital murder, and four counts of sexual battery against Leesa Maria Gray.

Loden met Leesa on June 22, 2000. The waitress was stranded with a flat tire when Loden forced her into his van. He offered to help her but later got angry when the girl said that she never wanted to become a Marine. Loden then sexually assaulted the teenage girl for four hours and later suffocated her to death.

The following afternoon, court records say “Loden was discovered lying by the side of a road with the words ‘I’m sorry’ carved into his chest and apparent self-inflicted lacerations on his wrists.” At the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman, he was injected with a lethal mixture of drugs and was pronounced dead at 6:12 pm by Sunflower County Coroner Heather Burton.

His last meal included two bone-in fried pork chops, fried okra, a baked sweet potato with butter, Pillsbury Grands biscuits with butter and molasses, peach cobbler with French vanilla ice cream and Lipton sweet tea, the Mississippi Department of Corrections told Fox News Digital. 

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Officials confirmed that Loden was dressed in a red-colored prison jumpsuit and before being executed, he said ‘I love you’ to his family in Japanese.