Man Gets Death Sentence For Murders

Man Gets Death Sentence For Murders

Greensboro News & Record

Copyright 1993

Sunday, September 5, 1993

TRIAD/STATE

MAN GETS DEATH SENTENCE FOR MURDERS

The Associated Press

A former Fort Bragg sergeant has been sentenced to death for the 1988 murders of two Rowland Motel employees.

A 12-member jury announced its verdict Friday in the case of Daniel Thomas Garner. The jury had deliberated for two days.

Garner’s lawyer, Wade Byrd of Fayetteville, filed an immediate notice of appeal.

According to testimony, Garner checked into the Rowland Motel on Oct. 31, 1988, with topless dancer Dana Denise Adams. The two were intending to rob a drug dealer of $10,000. Instead, Garner killed two employees – Timmy Oxendine, 23, and Roger Strickland, 20, both of Rowland – and took $700.

Adams is awaiting trial on two counts of first-degree murder.

Garner pleaded guilty last week to killing both men with a .25-caliber automatic pistol, the Fayetteville Observer-Times reported.

He had previously been convicted of killing and robbing a Fayetteville convenience store clerk and wounding and trying to rob a Fayetteville taxi cab driver. He was sentenced to life plus 85 years in prison for those crimes.

After reading the jury’s decision, Battle scheduled Garner’s execution for Nov. 26 but then staid the execution when Byrd said he would appeal the sentence.