Andrew Richard Lukehart Executed in Florida | For k!lling 5 Months Old Baby Gabrielle Hanshaw
He’s a evil, twisted-minded, sadistic person, an animal. And I don’t think they can do to him can be compared to what he’s done to my grandchild. Do you want the death penalty for Andrew Loukart? Yes. Why is that? He k!lled my baby. I got scared and I started to panic. And I ran outside and threw the diaper away and jumped in the car and started up and left.
The defendant, Andrew Richard Loukart, is hereby sentenced to death for the m*rder of J’bariel Hanshaw. Your reaction to the sentence today? Huh. What does that mean? I’ll be back. On June 2nd, 2026, Andrew Richard Loukart was finally executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida at 6:19 p.m. He was pronounced dead. 30 years.
That is how long it took to get to that moment. And when that curtain went up at exactly 6:00 p.m., he was already strapped to a table. A priest was sitting at the foot of that table. Not to save him, but to pray over him as he died. Among the witnesses seated in that room was the mother of his victim. She had waited 30 years for this.
30 years since the night her daughter disappeared. 30 years since she got a phone call that turned out to be a lie. 30 years since a 5-month-old baby girl named J’bariel took her last breath. Not from illness, not from accident, but at the hands of the one person who was supposed to be watching over her. In this video, we are going to walk through everything.
The crime, the cover-up, the trial, the controversy, and what happened inside that chamber when the warden asked him if he had any last words. We will find out what he said. We will find out what he chose or didn’t choose for his final meal. Stay with me because this story doesn’t start in that execution chamber. It starts with a baby named Gabby.
Gabriel Henshaw was 5 months old. She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t protect herself. She was entirely, completely dependent on the adults around her. Her mother, Misty, was a young woman doing her best. On the night of February 1996, Misty was occupied caring for her older daughter who had fallen ill. That left baby Gabriel, who everyone close to her called Gabby, in the care of Misty’s boyfriend.
His name was Andrew Richard Lucart. He was 22 years old. And that night, he would become the last person to ever see Gabby alive. What happened in that house, in a back room during a diaper change, is something that, once you hear it, you cannot unhear. According to court records, something small triggered what followed. Gabriel would not lie flat.
She was 5 months old. She was squirming. She was doing what babies do. Andrew Lucart had taken the baby into a back room to change her diaper. And when she wouldn’t stay still, something in him snapped. He did not accidentally drop her. He did not trip or lose his footing. According to his own testimony, his own words from the witness stand, he forcefully and repeatedly pushed her head and neck into the floor.
At least five blows to the head. When Gabrielle stopped breathing, Lue Heart didn’t call for help. He didn’t call Misty. He didn’t call 911. He didn’t perform CPR. He panicked and then he made a choice. He picked up the infant’s body, walked outside, and threw her into a nearby pond. Then he got into Misty’s car, a white 1981 Oldsmobile Regency, and drove away.
This is where the case takes a turn that is almost impossible to comprehend. About 30 minutes after driving away, Lue Heart called Misty from a convenience store on Normandy Boulevard and he told her to call 911. Not because he was confessing. Not because he was turning himself in. He told her to call 911 because according to him, someone had broken into the house, grabbed Gabrielle, and fled in a blue Chevrolet Blazer.
He told her he was chasing the kidnapper right now. Misty, a mother who had no reason not to believe the man she trusted, hung up and called the police. She reported her daughter kidnapped. Meanwhile, Lue Heart was driving erratically through Clay County, eventually running his car off the road.
He turned up in the front yard of a Florida State Trooper. Law enforcement fanned out immediately. Helicopters were deployed. Divers were brought in to search the pond near the house. A massive search effort was launched for a baby that was already dead. Already thrown away like she meant nothing. When police caught up with Lue Heart and began questioning him, his story started to fall apart almost immediately.
First, he said the abduction happened from the front of the house. Then he changed it. The abduction happened at a store. Then, under continued questioning, the story collapsed entirely. He admitted it. Gabrielle was dead. She had never been kidnapped, and he had known where her body was the entire time that helicopters circled overhead and divers searched the water.
He led detectives to a wooded area off Chaffee Road. That is where they found her. What made this case even more disturbing was what investigators uncovered about Lueckart’s history. This was not his first time. Just 2 years earlier, in 1994, Andrew Lueckart had been convicted of child abuse. A different infant, a different case.
That baby had suffered a fractured skull and multiple broken bones while in Lueckart’s care. For that, he received 10 months in jail, 4 years of probation, and mandatory parenting and anger management classes. And then he was released back into the world, back into situations where he had access to children. He was still on that probation, actively serving it, on the night Gabrielle Hanshaw died.
[Part 2 :]
The system had flagged him. The system had convicted him. The system had put a clock on him. And when that clock ran out, Gabby paid the price. Lueckart was arrested and charged with first-degree m*rder and aggravated child abuse in the death of Gabrielle Hanshaw. He was 22 years old. He had already destroyed one child’s body. Now, he had taken a life.
The trial took place in early 1997, just under a year after Gabrielle’s death. What made this trial unusual and deeply memorable is that Andrew Lueckart chose to testify in his own defense. He took the stand. He looked at the jury and he told them what he did. He said he struck the baby with such force that she stopped breathing.
He described the panic that followed. I got scared and I started to panic and I ran outside, threw the diaper away, and I jumped into my car and started it up and left, he said on the stand. I felt bad. I felt guilty. Those words hung in that courtroom. The jury heard them. And then the jury went to deliberate. They were back in 1 hour and 30 minutes. Guilty.
First-degree m*rder. Aggravated child abuse. One month later, in March 1997, the penalty phase concluded. The jury was asked to recommend either life in prison or death. The vote was 9 to 3 in favor of death. When the recommendation was read aloud in that courtroom, Luckhart showed no emotion. Not a flinch. Not a tear.
Not a single visible reaction. His mother, however, ran screaming out of the courtroom. The judge accepted the jury’s recommendation. Andrew Richard Luckhart was sentenced to death. What followed was something that happens in many capital punishment cases in the United States. Decades of legal proceedings, appeals, and waiting.
Luckhart sat on death row in Florida for nearly 30 years. While he waited, Gabrielle’s mother, Misty, also waited for a verdict that had already been delivered. For a sentence that had already been handed down. For a justice that kept getting postponed. During those decades, Luckhart’s health deteriorated significantly.
By 2023, his kidneys had begun to fail. In January 2026, he collapsed on death row. Medical records confirmed his kidneys were approaching complete failure. He was kept alive, medically maintained, while his legal team worked on appeals. And then, on May 1st, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Leuchart’s death warrant. He had 30 days to live.
This is why this case became more than just a straightforward execution. Because in the weeks between the signing of that death warrant and June 2nd, Leuchart’s attorneys raised a number of serious legal arguments. All of them were ultimately rejected by the courts, but they deserve to be understood. Argument one, the kidney disease.
Leuchart’s lawyers argued that his near-total kidney failure created a genuine risk that the execution drugs would not be processed normally by his body. Without functioning kidneys to filter the medication, the drugs could remain concentrated in his bloodstream far longer than intended, potentially prolonging suffering rather than ensuring a quick death.
An anesthesiologist who reviewed his medical records concluded there was an extremely high likelihood he would experience a painful and torturous death. The courts considered this argument and declined to halt the execution. Argument two, the jury vote. The 9-2-3 jury recommendation has a specific legal significance in Florida.
Florida’s death penalty sentencing scheme, which allows a judge to impose death even without a unanimous jury recommendation, has been ruled unconstitutional twice in the state’s history. Both times, Florida lawmakers reinstated it. Leuchart’s attorneys argued that in every other state in the country, a non-unanimous jury vote like this would result in a sentence of life without parole, not death.
The courts disagreed. Argument three, the rush. Florida is the only state in the nation that operates a so-called surprise death warrant process. The governor can sign a warrant and schedule an execution with almost no advance notice to the inmate or their legal team. Lucart’s attorneys had roughly 30 days from the warrant’s signing to mount any final challenges.
They argued this was constitutionally insufficient. The courts disagreed again. Argument four, background and trauma. This is perhaps the most layered piece. Expert witnesses had testified during sentencing that Lucart grew up in a home marked by alcoholism, violence, and sexual abuse. They testified he suffered from PTSD, had borderline intellectual functioning, and had never received meaningful mental health treatment in his life.
Anti-death penalty advocates argued that the three jurors who voted for life had clearly been persuaded by this evidence. But the judge’s sentence stood. On June 1st, 2026, one day before the execution, the United States Supreme Court denied Lucart’s final appeal. Every door had closed. The date was set. The time was set. The execution would proceed.
June 2nd, 2026, Andrew Lucart woke up at 5:15 in the morning. Department of Corrections spokesperson Jordan Kirkland, speaking at a news conference that day, confirmed that Lucart had remained compliant throughout the morning. He was calm. He was cooperative. He did not request a last meal. This is worth pausing on.
Most death row inmates, regardless of what they have done, choose a final meal. It is one of the last expressions of personal choice available to a condemned person. Lucart declined entirely. He also declined visitors. No family came. No friends came to say goodbye. He did meet with a spiritual advisor.
Someone to sit with him in those final hours. And he was visited by a priest who would later accompany him into the execution chamber. Gabrielle Hanshaw’s mother, Misty, had told reporters she intended to be present for the execution. She had waited 30 years. She was going to be there. The execution was scheduled for 6:00 p.m.
At 6:00 p.m., the curtain on the execution chamber window went up. Andrew Richard Lucart was already on the table. He was strapped down. Intravenous line was in his arm. And at the foot of the table, the priest who had met with him earlier that day sat quietly. There to witness. There to pray. The method was the standard Florida three-drug protocol.
A sedative to render the inmate unconscious, a paralytic agent, and a final drug to stop the heart. The warden approached Lucart. He asked the question that is always asked in that room. Do you have a final statement? Lucart raised his head. He looked toward the front row of the witness viewing area. And he said two words, “I’m sorry.
” Then he spoke again. He recited a Bible verse, Luke chapter 23, verse 34. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Those are the words attributed to Jesus Christ during the crucifixion. A man asking God to forgive the people who were k!lling him. That was Andrew Luckart’s final statement.
The drugs began to flow almost immediately after. Luckart lost consciousness quickly. A few minutes passed. The warden stepped forward, shook him, and called his name. No response. A medic was brought in. Vital signs were checked. At 6:19 p.m., 19 minutes after the curtain had risen, Andrew Richard Luckart was pronounced dead.
Florida’s eighth execution of 2026 was complete. Before we close, we need to come back to her. Because in cases like this, the story can sometimes become so consumed by the perpetrator, by the legal battles, the controversy, the execution details, that the victim gets swallowed up in the noise. Gabriel Hanshaw was 5 months old. She had not yet learned to sit up on her own.
She had not yet spoken her first word. She had not yet taken her first step. She had a mother who loved her and called her Gabby. She had a life ahead of [clears throat] her that was taken in a back room during a routine diaper change by a man who should never have been alone with a child. Her mother, Misty, attended the execution on June 2nd.
She did not give an interview She didn’t need to say anything. 30 years of waiting had finally come to an end. This case exists within a much larger story about Florida’s approach to capital punishment. Andrew Luckart was the 36th person executed under Governor Ron DeSantis. In 2025 alone, Florida executed 19 inmates, a modern era record.
The previous record was eight, set in 2014. No other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 has overseen that many executions in a single year. Andrew Richard Lukart, born into chaos, raised in violence, given a chance after his first conviction, and he wasted it in the worst possible way. He k!lled a 5-month-old baby.
He lied about it. He led police to her body only after his lies collapsed. He spent 30 years on death row while the courts, his lawyers, and the justice system worked through every available appeal. [music] And on a Tuesday evening in June 2026, he was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. His final words were an apology and a Bible verse asking for forgiveness.
He declined a last meal. No one came to see him off. The only people in that room who had waited 30 years for that moment were there for Gabrielle. Now, here is the question I want to leave you with because this case raises it loudly. Whether you support capital punishment or oppose it, when the system identifies someone as dangerous, when it convicts a man of fracturing an infant skull, when it sentences him to 10 months and probation, and send him back into the world, and then that man k!lls a baby while still on that probation, where
does the responsibility lie? With the man who committed the crime? Absolutely. But does it end there? I’ll see you in the next one.
