Execution Report: Jessy San Miguel

Jessy Carlos San Miguel, 28, was executed by lethal injection on 29 June 2000, in Huntsville, Texas, for the murder of four people in a fast-food restaurant.

In January 1991, Jessy San Miguel, then 19, and Jerome Green, 17, waited outside a Taco Bell restaurant that had been closed and locked for the night. When an employee opened the door to take out the trash, the pair went inside and forced the assistant manager, Michael John Phelan, 28, to wait for a time-lock safe to open. Then they herded Phelan, employee Theresa Fraga, 16, and Theresa's cousin, Frank Fraga, 23, into a walk-in freezer. Theresa Fraga was also pregnant at the time. The robbers noticed Son Trang Nyugen, 35, a friend of the Fragas who was waiting to take them home, sitting in a vehicle outside and also forced him into the freezer with the other victims. San Miguel and Green then left the restaurant with the money.

A few minutes later, San Miguel decided to go back inside the restaurant and the freezer where his hostages were. Police who took his confession said he "asked them to give him a good reason why he shouldn't kill them", then shot them each in the head at close range with a 9 mm pistol. Phelan and Nyugen were shot once and the Fragas were each shot twice.

San Miguel and Green were stopped about a half a mile from the scene, on suspicion of drunk driving. In their car, police found the gun, two Taco Bell sacks stuffed with $1,390, ski masks, and two pairs of gloves. They began looking for Taco Bell restaurants in the area and found the four victims in the freezer. The first officer on the scene fainted at the sight of the bodies. There was so much blood on the floor, police used a squeegee to find the spent cartridges.

Green was a former part-time employee of that restaurant. San Miguel had applied for a job there but was not hired.

San Miguel had a violent past. He had been arrested nine times and had been accused of shooting a man. At the time of the murders, he was free on bonds totaling $45,000 on four charges of weapons violations and burglaries.

A jail officer testified that San Miguel remarked before his conviction, "The only reason why I killed those people is they couldn't make good Mexican food."

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