Rapper Cool C to Be Executed for Shooting Death of Cop During Bank Robbery

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Rapper Cool C, on death row for the shooting death of a Philadelphia police officer, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 8 after Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett signed his death warrant, the New York Daily News reports.

Cool C, whose legal name is Christopher Roney, tried to rob a PNC Bank in 1996, when he and accomplices Ernest Canty and Warren McGlone were confronted by nine-year police veteran Lauretha Vaird.

Officer Vaird, a 43-year-old single mother of two, was shot in the abdomen and later died. Roney was convicted on a first-degree-murder charge despite his mother’s testimony that she was making her son breakfast when the robbery took place, according to the news site. 

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An appeal of the conviction failed in 2005.

Roney’s accomplices are serving life in prison, the Daily News notes.

Read more at the New York Daily News.