Texas man to be executed for kidnapping, murder of 5-year-old girl

A Texas man is set to be executed Thursday for the 2001 kidnapping and murder of a 5-year-old girl in El Paso.

David Renteria, 53, will die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. in a Texas state prison in Huntsville, pending any last-minute appeals by his attorneys. All of his prior appeals have failed.

Renteria was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to death for the murder of Alexandra Flores, who was abducted from a Walmart in El Paso while Christmas shopping with her family on Nov. 18, 2001.

For about 40 minutes, Renteria scouted the store looking for a potential victim before spotting Alexandra, prosecutors said. She was the youngest of eight children, and grainy surveillance video showed her following Renteria out of the store.

Alexandra’s body was found the next day in an alley 16 miles from the store. She had been strangled to death, and her body was burned.

Renteria was identified as a suspect by a palm print on a plastic bag that was placed over Alexandra’s head. Additionally, blood in his vehicle matched Alexandra’s DNA. Renteria also admitted he was at the Walmart when Alexandra disappeared.

In various appeals since he was sentenced to death, Renteria has claimed he was forced to kidnap Alexandra by members of the Barrio Azteca gang. According to his account, he was forced to abduct Alexandra and dispose of her body, but he was not the one who killed her.

At his trial in 2003, Renteria’s attorneys made no mention of the Barrio Azteca gang or Renteria’s claims that he was forced to commit the crime, according to court documents.

Texas’ state parole board unanimously rejected Renteria’s last appeal on Tuesday.

Renteria is not the only man facing execution in the United States on Thursday: Casey McWhorter, 49, is scheduled to die for killing a man in 1993 in Alabama. If Renteria and McWhorter are both executed on Thursday, they will be the 22nd and 23rd people executed in the U.S. this year, and Renteria will be the eighth in Texas.

The El Paso Walmart where Renteria abducted Alexandra Flores sits about 8 miles south of the El Paso Walmart where a racist gunman killed 23 people in a 2019 rampage.

With News Wire Services