A Utah man who killed his girlfriend’s mother by slashing her throat was put to death by lethal injection early on Thursday in the state’s first execution since 2010.

Taberon Dave Honie, 48, was convicted of aggravated murder in the July 1998 death of Claudia Benn, the maternal grandmother of his now 27-year-old daughter, Tressa.

Honie was pronounced dead at 12:25am local time in an execution that went as planned and took about 17 minutes. He tapped his foot and mouthed “I love you” to family members watching from a witness chamber after he was given the lethal injection of two doses of pentobarbital.

Honie was 22 when he broke into Benn’s house in Cedar City, the tribal headquarters of the Paiute Indian tribe of Utah, after a day of heavy drinking and drug use. He repeatedly slashed Benn’s throat and stabbed other parts of her body. The judge who sentenced him to death also found that Honie had sexually abused one of Benn’s other grandchildren who was in the house with a then two-year-old Tressa at the time of the murder.

Honie, who had grown up on the Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona, spent the evening with his daughter and other immediate family before the execution. He told Tressa earlier this week that he had come to terms with his fate and hoped she could too, she told the Associated Press.

After the medical team removed Honie’s body from the chamber, his family was allowed in to perform a Native American grieving ritual with bird feathers and cornmeal that they told officers would help free his soul after death.

Outside the prison, a group of anti-death penalty protesters sang Amazing Grace and held signs that said, “All life is precious.”

After decades of failed appeals, Honie’s execution warrant was signed in June despite defense objections to the planned lethal drug. In July, the state changed its execution protocol to using only a high dose of pentobarbital – the nervous system suppressant used to euthanize pets.

The Utah board of pardons and parole denied Honie’s petition to commute his sentence to life in prison after a July hearing during which Honie’s attorneys described his troubled childhood growing up on the reservation with parents who abused alcohol. He had started using hard drugs as a teenager and told the parole board he would not have killed Benn if he had been in his “right mind”. He asked the board to allow him “to exist” so he could be a support for his daughter.

Tressa Honie told the board she had a complicated relationship with her mother and would lose her most supportive parent if her father were to be executed. She said in an interview on Tuesday that she was not ready to lose her dad and felt abandoned by family on her mother’s side who had fought for his execution.

Benn’s close family argued that Taberon Honie deserved no mercy, and they said his execution was the justice they needed after decades of grief.

“He deserves an eye for an eye,” said Benn’s niece, Sarah China Azule.

She and her cousins described Benn as a pillar in their family and south-western Utah community. She was a Paiute tribal council member, substance abuse counselor and caregiver for her children and grandchildren.

Hours before Honie’s execution, a man described by his lawyers as intellectually disabled was executed in Texas for strangling and trying to rape a woman who went jogging near her Houston home more than 27 years ago.

A Wyoming-based extreme distance jockey was left to fend for herself in Mongolia after race organizers “couldn’t give a crap” about what happened to her when she fell too sick to compete in the 620-mile trek across the East Asian country.

Dede Anders, 49, was a last-minute entry in the Mongol Derby and arrived in Mongolia on Aug. 1 after race organizers reached out to her last month when another competitor dropped out, she told the Cowboy State Daily.

From the nation’s capital of Ulaanbaatar, Anders took an eight-hour trip to the race starting point and was all set to take the lengthy ride across the Mongolian Steppe.

The race — self-proclaimed as the world’s toughest horse race — recreates the horse messenger system developed by Genghis Khan in 1224, according to The Mongolian Derby’s website.

However, on Monday, two days before the race was set to start, she became violently ill.

“It’s a lot of gastrointestinal stuff,” Anders told the outlet. “I was throwing up and stuff like that.”

The race — which usually takes 10 days to complete as riders navigate through wicked terrain and spend, on average, around 13 hours a day in the saddle — was now out of the question given her condition.

Even worse, when Anders tried to seek medical help at the base camp, she was shocked by the lack of empathy or care the race’s medical staff showed for one of their registered riders.

“Two medics looked at me. They told me I needed nothing but did nothing for me. They told me to ride it out,” the lifelong horse racer told the outlet.

Anders, a US Army medic veteran with a doctorate in medical science and emergency medicine from Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn., was astonished that a race that claimed to have “an international team of highly experienced medics” did so little to help her.

“One of the medics didn’t even touch me or ask me any questions,” she told the outlet.

“The other one took my pulse for a couple of seconds. They didn’t take my vitals, didn’t ask if I was diabetic or what medications I was taking. All they told me was it would pass in 24 hours.”

Anders then met with the Mongol Derby’s race director, Katherine, to tell her she wouldn’t be racing because of how sick she became.

“Katherine came to my yurt and talked to me at least twice,” Anders said. “I told her I was sick both days.”

During this time, she claims the race provided her with no medical care but instead drove her back to Mongolia’s capital, where a driver stranded her at a hotel.

“They put me in a vehicle for eight hours sick with a GI bug, with a driver who barely spoke English,” Anders told the outlet.

“I had to use Expedia from base camp to book a hotel, had the driver stop in the city, and get my passport so I could finally check into the hotel.”

She claims being “dumped off” back in the capital was the thing only organizers of the derby did to help her while ill.

“I was too ill to get on a horse for 620 miles,” Anders shared. “But I was also too ill to get in a car for eight hours and be dumped off into a city without a passport or a flight home.”

Now alone and still dealing with illness in a foreign country, Anders’ trouble continued when she struggled to find a flight back to the US.

“I had to call home and have my boyfriend book a flight for me because I didn’t have cellphone reception,” she said. “Seattle is the closest I could get. I just want to get back to the US.”

The experienced rider couldn’t find a flight back to the US until Aug. 11, and once she lands in Seattle, she will need to make other travel arrangements to get back to Wyoming.

As she waits to return home, Anders said she has emailed race organizers about her feelings about how she was treated but hasn’t “received a response.”

“I paid around $30,000 to go over for this thing,” the rider said. “My entry fee alone was almost $17,000, and I didn’t even get my blood pressure taken when I was sick.”

Prior to the drama, Anders told Cody Enterprise that she was making “payments of about $900 per month” to foot the cost of the race she once considered a “lifelong dream.”

Missing out on the Mongol Derby, which she described as “kind of a mess” and “not very organized,” is the least of her concerns now, given how apathetic the race’s medical staff was while she was ill.

“I work in the ER, and I have my doctorate in emergency medicine,” she told the outlet.

“You couldn’t swing a cat and hit a medic over there. I don’t know what the holdup was, but I was definitely blown off for whatever reason.”