David Castillo was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Clarencio Champion
According to court documents David Castillo would rob a liquor store where he would stab Clarencio Champion several times. Clarencio Champion would die a week later in the hospital
David Castillo would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
David Castillo would be executed by lethal injection on September 23 1998
David Castillo Photos
David Castillo Case
A former electrician has been executed at Huntsville, Texas, for the 1983 robbery and murder of a south Texas liquor store clerk. David Allen Castillo told his family: ‘Take care of yourselves.
I love you. I’m ready,’ just before receiving a lethal injection for the stabbing death of Clarencio Champion. The 34-year-old Castillo was pronounced dead at 6:23 p.m. CDT today. Castillo said he looked on his execution as ‘a journey. Things happen for a reason…There’s no man so good that he’s free from evil and no man so bad he’s worth nothing.’
According to court records, Castillo stabbed Champion in the chest, abdomen and face during the July 14, 1983, robbery of the Party House Liquor Store in Mercedes in far south Texas. The 59-year-old Champion, who was working as a cashier at the store, died of his wounds about a week later. Castillo, a native of Cook County, Illinois, was 19 years old when the crime was committed. Prison records show that he had been employed as an electrician prior to the crime. Castillo was the 14th Texas death row inmate executed this year and the 159th since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.