Two arrested as chaos erupts during Texas execution

Chaos erupted outside Texas' death chamber when the son of the condemned inmate pounded on the chamber windows, shouted obscenities and threw fists after his father spoke his final words.

Billie Wayne Coble, a Vietnam War veteran who killed his estranged wife's parents and brother and threatened to do the same to her in 1989, told five witnesses that he selected to attend his Thursday night execution that he loved them. Coble then nodded as they watched from a witness room, saying: "Take care."

When he finished speaking, his son, grandson, and daughter-in-law became emotional, and the men swung and kicked at others in the death chamber witness area. Officers stepped in but said the men continued to resist and were eventually moved to a courtyard, where both were handcuffed and arrested.

"Why are you doing this?" the woman asked. "They just killed his daddy."

As the men were being subdued outside, a single dose of pentobarbital was injected into Coble. He gasped several times and began snoring as the lethal dose of the drug was being administered inside the death chamber at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

He was pronounced dead 11 minutes later, at 6:24 p.m. His son and grandson, later identified as Gordon Wayne Coble, 45, and Dalton Coble, 21, were arrested on charges of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Both have been released on $1,000 bond each.

The 70-year-old Billie Wayne Coble was the oldest inmate executed by Texas since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982.

He was convicted nearly three decades ago for the August 1989 shooting deaths of Robert and Zelda Vicha, and their son, Bobby Vicha. The victims were killed at separate homes in Axtell, northeast of Waco. A prosecutor once described Coble as having "a heart full of scorpions."

Coble was convicted of capital murder in 1990. An appeals court ordered a new trial on punishment in 2007, but a second jury also sentenced him to death. Other appeals were also denied.