An illegal alien from Mexico has been executed in the State of Texas after he committed the heinous murder of a Houston, Texas, police officer. The slain officer was a Desert Storm veteran, and his wife was pregnant at the time. He will never meet his now 19-year-old daughter as a result of the illegal alien’s actions.
According to an article posted Wednesday, January 22nd, on the left-of-center Huffington Post, 46-year-old Edgar Tamayo was executed Wednesday for the heinous murder of Houston, Texas, Police Officer Guy Gaddis. Officer Gaddis was only twenty-four years old at the time of his murder by Tamayo.
HPD Officer Guy Gaddis went to work on Sunday night, January 30th, 1994, according to the Houston Police Officer’s Union Fallen Officers’ website. Gaddis, who had only been a Houston Police Officer for about fifteen months, was working a single-officer patrol unit. After running several routine calls for service, Officer Gaddis was flagged down by a man who said he was robbed by two men at a night club on the southwest side of Houston.
After Officer Gaddis called for assistance, he detained two suspects, one of whom was later identified as Edgar Tamayo. After finding a stolen watch on Tamayo, Gaddis handcuffed him and placed him in his patrol car along with an additional accomplice. Both suspects were handcuffed with their hands behind their backs. Gaddis proceeded to drive the suspects to a police command station; Tamayo managed to pull a gun from his pants and brutally shot Officer Gaddis in the back of the head three times.
Officer Gaddis, a Desert Storm Army veteran, was survived by his then-pregnant wife, Rosa, and his parents, according to the Officer Down Memorial page. The daughter Gaddis would never meet is named Stephanie and is now 19 years old.
Despite the heinous nature of Tamayo’s crime and the fact that he was in the United States illegally, diplomats from the Mexican government and our own U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry attempted to intervene to stop his execution. Tamayo had a criminal record in California, where he served time for robbery and was paroled but never deported.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and the Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson opposed the diplomatic efforts to postpone the execution of Tamayo, and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the execution to take place. Nearly twenty years after the senseless murder of Police Officer Guy Gaddis, his killer received his earned punishment.
According to the Huffington Post article, the protests to Tamayo’s execution centered around a ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, not in the United States, requiring that foreign nationals be advised of their consular rights. The United States Supreme Court had previously ruled that the International Court of Justice ruling could not be enforced in the United States unless Congress implemented legislation requiring states to do so. This was in a 2004 case involving Mexican national Jose Medellin, another illegal alien from Mexico who was scheduled to be executed for the rape and murder in 1993 of two young teenage girls in northwest Harris County (Houston area). This case was defended by then Texas Solicitor General, now U.S. Senator, Ted Cruz.
“Unfortunately, this legislation has not been adopted,” the Mexican foreign minister acknowledged to the Huffington Post. Texas Governor Rick Perry’s spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said, “It doesn’t matter where you’re from. If you commit a despicable crime like this in Texas, you are subject to our state laws, including a fair trial by jury and the ultimate penalty.”