FLORIDA LAST MEAL
RIGOBERTO SANCHEZ-VELASCO
October 2, 2002

Mariel, Class of 1980...

Last Meal: Sanchez had a last meal of chicken fried rice, fried fish filets, avocado salad, cheesecake and milk.

The skinny: Sanchez-Velasco was put to death Wednesday for the 1987 rape and murder of 11-year-old Kathy Ecenarro in Hialeah. The convicted killer dropped all appeals and volunteered to be executed. Sanchez, a refugee who came to this country from Cuba during the Mariel boatlift in 1980. While in prison he was subsequently convicted for his role in two slayings in the Florida State Prison and sentenced to 15 years for each one (sentence suspended as of today).


WELL, WHICH ONE IS IT?...Sanchez once told a judge, "I hate people. I don't like them. I want to kill people. You understand?" But as Sanchez-Velasco lay shackled to the death table at 9:31 a.m., warden Brad Carter asked him if he had any last words. ''I love you, everybody,'' the condemned man called out to more than three dozen people seated on the other side of the witness room windows in the death chamber at Florida State Prison in Starke.

UMMMM, I DON'T THINK SO...The moment Sanchez-Velasco finished speaking, Carter spoke into a beige phone asking Gov. Jeb Bush if there would be a stay of execution. There wasn't.

Factoid: It was the first execution in Florida since Jan. 11, 2001. He was the fifth inmate to volunteer to be executed since 1987, the 52nd to die since the resumption of executions in 1979 and the 247th to be put to death in Florida since 1924. There are 368 inmates on the state's death row.