He killed the store owner in 1986. He's executed by lethal injection in Florida.

A man convicted of killing a store owner during a robbery in the late 1980s was executed in Florida today, becoming the second execution of the year in this American state.

Melvin Trotter (65) was convicted of first - degree murder after in 1986 he drowned and stabbed Virgil Langford in her shop in Palmetto, writes Sky News.

The death penalty for Trotter was handed down for the first time in 1987, but the Supreme Court of Florida found some mistakes of the first court and ordered a retrial for the sentence. He was again sentenced to death in 1993. The execution by lethal injection is scheduled for today at 6:00 local time in Florida State Prison.

Lawyers appealed, arguing that prison officials mismanaged protocols for executing the death penalty and that Trotter, due to his age, should be excluded from execution. The Florida Supreme Court rejected the appeals, while the decision on the recent trial change is expected by the Supreme Court just hours before the execution.

According to judicial documents, Virgil Langford was found alive by a truck driver after the attack. Before she died in the hospital, she was able to describe her attacker. In addition to physical appearance, Langford said that the attacker carried an identification of the Tropicana company named Melvin, reports Telegrafi, tramsmeton Periscope.

The police later found in Trotter's house a blood - impressioned shirt consistent with the victim's blood type, while his hand trail was found in the store's meat fridge. This is the second execution in Florida this year.

The first was Ronald Palmer Heath (64), convicted of first - degree murder, and other charges after in 1989 killed businessman Michael Sheridan, whom he and his brother had met at a bar. Two more executions have been scheduled for next month in Florida.

State Governor Ron DeSantis supervised a record number of executions during 2025. In total, 19 people received lethal injections, more than each year since the death penalty was resumed in the United States in 1976. The previous record was eight executions in one year. /Periscope/