Florida executed Melvin Trotter, 65, Tuesday evening for the 1986 murder of Virgie Langford, a 72-year-old Palmetto grocery store owner.
Jordan Kirkland, communications director for the Florida Department of Corrections, said the sentence was carried out at 6:15 p.m. Feb. 24, 2026, and that the execution took place without incident.
According to Kirkland, a truck driver entered Lankford’s Grocery Store in Palmetto on June 16, 1986, and found Langford on the floor at the back of the store. Langford told the driver she had been stabbed and robbed. She had suffered seven stab wounds, including a large abdominal wound. Langford died of cardiac arrest several hours after surgery.
Deputy Duane Henderson of the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, one of the arresting officers in the 1986 case, spoke to ABC7 for the first time about the arrest.
“He was so under the influence of drugs he was probably upset that he had been captured at that point. And made no confessions of guilt,” Henderson said.
Trotter was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to death.
The process began at 6:03 p.m. Approximately 25 people were present in the witness room, separated from Trotter by glass. When asked if he had a last statement, Trotter said no.
Trotter was strapped to a medical bed, his hands covered and bound, with a white sheet over his body. He was breathing heavily, and his chest could be seen rising and falling for several minutes. At 6:06 p.m., the warden attempted to rouse Trotter, grabbing him and calling his name, with no reaction. At 6:14 p.m., a doctor examined Trotter and checked his pulse. The warden declared Trotter dead at 6:15 p.m.
The witness room was quiet throughout the process. No one spoke. Family members of the victim were seated in the front row. Following the declaration of death, the curtain came down, family members were escorted out, and media were led back to a staging area.
Demonstrators gathered outside Florida State Prison for approximately an hour before the scheduled 6 p.m. execution, holding signs opposing the death penalty and speaking out against the number of executions carried out in Florida in recent years.
Groups from several parts of Florida were represented. As the hour approached, protesters chose to remain silent in support of Trotter.
Among those present was a contingent from Our Lady of Lord’s Church, which said it takes a bus trip to the prison for every execution. One woman at the scene said she had attended 18 of the 19 executions carried out in Florida last year.
“We usually take a bus trip up here whenever they have an execution because we don’t believe that you should take a life for a life,” one protester said. “And everybody has a soul, is innocent when they were born. And somehow this person had problems in his life or her life. And they take a bad course. But that doesn’t mean that they deserve to die. A lot of these people have been in prison 20, 30, 40 years. And they have done some good things while they’re in there. We’re not saying let them out. We’re just saying that they do not deserve to die.”
Grace Hanna, executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, also spoke ahead of the execution. Hanna called the practice inhumane and said her organization has seen an unacceptable number of executions so far this year in Florida.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, all Florida executions are carried out by lethal injection, a paralytic drug that stops the heart.
Two more executions are planned for next month at Florida State Prison.
