Zane Michael Floyd (born September 20, 1975)[2] is an American convicted mass murderer who at the age of 23 killed four people and injured a fifth in a supermarket in Las Vegas, Nevada, on June 3, 1999.
[4] Days before the crime, he was fired from his security officer job and evicted from his apartment, moving back into a room at his parents' home.
[4][5] On June 3, 1999, at approximately 5:15 in the morning, Floyd entered an Albertson's supermarket located at 3864 West Sahara Avenue in Las Vegas and opened fire on random individuals in the store using a shotgun.
Diving under a produce table, Emenegger avoided Floyd's gunfire for 15 seconds but ultimately was shot in the upper-chest region resulting in a punctured lung.
Eventually, Floyd found 60-year-old clerk Lucille Alice Tarantino in the rear of the store and fatally shot her in the head at point-blank range.
It later emerged that shortly before the shooting, Floyd had telephoned an escort agency and called for the services of a young woman at his apartment.
[6] Floyd left through the supermarket's north doors to meet the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, who had been called by an employee who had been upstairs and believed there was a robbery in progress.
[8] Without exchanging any gunfire, Floyd ran back into the supermarket and left through the west doors, hoping to avoid the police outside.
In December 2014, the U.S. District Court partially granted the State's motion to dismiss and denied Floyd's remaining claims on the merits; however, it allowed an appeal as to several issues.
In October 2019, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of Floyd's habeas petition.
[18] In July 2020, he filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging the Ninth Circuit's application of the Strickland standard.
Floyd's execution was once again stayed by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Boulware II on February 14, 2022, after Nevada chief deputy Attorney General Randall Gilmer told the court that Clark County prosecutors could not satisfy the legal requirements to obtain a new death warrant to carry out the execution by February 28, when the state's current supply of ketamine, one of four drugs used in lethal injections in Nevada, expires.