Texas death row inmate plucks out eye, eats it



By MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press
Jan. 9, 2009,

A Texas death row inmate with a history of mental problems pulled out
his only good eye, authorities said today.
Andre Thomas told officers he ate it.
Thomas, 25, was arrested for the fatal stabbings of his estranged
wife, their young son and her 13-month-old daughter in March 2004.
Their hearts also had been ripped out. He was convicted and condemned
for the infant's death.
While in the Grayson County Jail in Sherman, Thomas similarly had
plucked out his right eye before his trial later in 2004. A judge
subsequently ruled he was competent to stand trial.
A death-row officer at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice found Thomas in his cell with blood on his face and
had him taken to the unit infirmary.
""Thomas said he pulled out his eye and subsequently ingested it,"
agency spokesman Jason Clark said today.
Thomas was treated at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler after the
Dec. 9 incident. Then he was transferred and remains at the Jester
Unit, a prison psychiatric facility near Richmond southwest of Houston.
"He will finally be able to receive the mental health care that we
had wanted and begged for from day 1," Bobbie Peterson-Cate, Thomas'
trial attorney, told the Sherman Herald Democrat. "He is insane and
mentally ill. It is exactly the same reason he pulled out the last one."
At his trial, defense lawyers also argued he suffered from alcohol
and drug abuse.
Thomas does not have an execution date.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in October upheld his conviction
and death sentence for the death of 13-month-old Leyha Marie Hughes.
Also killed March 27, 2004, were his wife, Laura Christine Boren, 20,
and their son, 4-year-old Andre Lee.
Thomas, from Texoma, walked into the Sherman Police Department and
told a dispatcher he had just murdered the three and had stabbed
himself in the chest.
Thomas told police how he put his victims' hearts in his pocket and
left their apartment, took them home, put them in a plastic bag and
threw them in the trash.
Court documents described the three victims as having "large, gaping
wounds to their chests."

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