VIRGINIA. SCHMITT EXECUTED FOR MURDER OF SECURITY GUARD

November 9, 2006: Virginia executed John Yancey Schmitt for fatally shooting a security guard who tried to protect bank tellers during a 1999 robbery. Schmitt, 33, received a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 9:14 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center.
“Come on with it,” were his final words.
Schmitt was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2000 for killing 39-year-old Earl Dunning, an Army retiree who died one month before he was to marry.
On February 17, 1999, Schmitt entered a Chesterfield County bank wearing sunglasses and a bulky jacket, attracting the attention of Dunning, the bank's security officer. Schmitt and an accomplice had robbed the same bank a month earlier.
Dunning placed himself between Schmitt and the bank tellers during the hold-up, said prosecutor Warren Von Schuch.
“He was a tremendous human being,” Von Schuch said. “This man really was a hero.”
After shooting Dunning, Schmitt fled with nearly $36,000 in cash. Schmitt was the 98th inmate executed in Virginia since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, and the fourth this year. Virginia's execution rate is second to Texas, which has executed 24 inmates this year. (Sources: Associated Press Writer, 10/11/2006)