Charles Victor Thompson Becomes First U.S. Inmate to Be Executed in 2026

A Texas man died after being given a lethal injection on Wednesday ... becoming the first person to be executed in the United States in 2026.

Charles Victor Thompson was pronounced dead at 6:50 PM Central Time at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, about 70 miles north of Houston, the Associated Press reports. He was 55.

Thompson fatally shot his ex-girlfriend, Glenda Dennise Hayslip, and her boyfriend, Darren Keith Cain, at her Houston apartment in April 1998 ... he was convicted of capital murder the following year and was sentenced to death.

Thompson had his original sentence overturned ... but he was retried in 2005, convicted and was again sentenced to die by lethal injection.

In November 2005, he escaped from the Harris County Jail in Houston and spent three days on the run before he was arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana -- he'd tried to receive wire transfers of money from abroad in an attempt to flee to Canada.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Thompson's request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty on Monday. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Thompson's final appeal about an hour before he was executed.

Thompson expressed regret for what happened in 1998 just prior to his execution and reportedly said there were "no winners in this situation." In 2018, he was featured in one episode of Netflix's "I Am a Killer" series. In an October interview with the Houston Press last year, he joked around with prison staff

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said Thompson's execution was "justice a long time coming."