[]
Then, on July 18, Mr. Mahdi hid in a shed at the home of James Myers, a public safety officer in Orangeburg, S.C. The shed was near a gas station where Mr. Mahdi had unsuccessfully tried to buy gas with a stolen credit card and left the stolen vehicle behind, records show.
When Mr. Myers, 56, returned to the house, Mr. Mahdi ambushed him and shot him at least eight times, according to court records. Mr. Mahdi then set Mr. Myers’s body on fire and fled. The victim’s wife found his body in the shed, according to records.
Mr. Weiss, the lawyer, said in an interview on Thursday that Mr. Mahdi “takes complete responsibility for the crimes that he committed.”
“He knows how awful they were, he knows how much pain he’s caused, and he really just does his best to sort of live a life of the mind,” Mr. Weiss said. He added that South Carolina’s execution process, in which a death row inmate chooses how to be killed, “shows that we’re on this sort of fruitless search to find the right way to kill people. And I think at the end of the day, there really isn’t a right way to kill people.”
Mr. Weiss said that Mr. Mahdi grew up in an abusive household. His father abused his mother, who fled the home when Mr. Mahdi was 4. As a result, Mr. Mahdi suffered from depression and mental health issues, Mr. Weiss said, and when his school tried to get him help, his father pulled him out.
Mr. Mahdi’s life devolved from there, Mr. Weiss said: He began stealing to help support himself and his brother because their father, who had his own mental illness, was not working. He went to juvenile prison at 14. He spent the next seven years in and out of prison before committing the two murders.
[]
Source link
