Man Who Killed 3 as Teen Is Among Pair Executed

A man who killed his mother, stepfather and a store clerk when he was 16 was put to death early Thursday, marking the first time in 40 years that an American was executed for crimes committed at such a young age.

“All the people who are hating me right now and are here waiting to see me die, when you wake up in the morning you aren’t going to feel any different,” Sean Sellers, 29, said before he was executed by injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

“Reach out to God and he will hear you. Let him touch your hearts. Don’t hate all your lives.”

Sellers’ final statement angered relatives who witnessed his execution.

“He took his last dig at us. . . . It is very presumptuous that he would know how we would still feel,” stepsister Noelle Terry said.

A short time earlier, a hitchhiker who beat, robbed and killed a man by running him over with his own car and stabbing him more than 30 times with a screwdriver was executed by injection in Arizona.

Darick Gerlaugh, 38, was the seventh Native American executed in the United States since the death penalty was restored in 1976 and the first permitted to use a sweat lodge for purification ceremonies.

Gerlaugh kept his eyes shut while the death warrant was read and had no last words.