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

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. 

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.