Willie Shannon, 33, was executed tonight

Willie Shannon, 33, was executed tonight for the carjack-slaying of Benjamin Garza on July 19, 1992.
He was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m.
Shannon has said that his gun went off as the 2 men struggled in a parking lot when the man refused to surrender his station wagon. What Shannon, then 19, didn't know was that Garza, 38, had been in the federal Witness Protection Program for a decade and had been living under a new identity after testifying at drug trials.
"As a federal protected witness, he's thinking his time has caught up with him," Shannon said. "So he sees somebody with a gun. 'Oh, my God, they've finally caught me.' And he's fighting for his life. He thought I was there to kill him.
"I was just unlucky. And he was unlucky, too."
Shannon becomes the 24th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas.
Shannon becomes the 51st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1055th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.