DRUG DEALER GETS DEATH ROW

HOUSTON - A drug dealer from Tennessee is headed to Texas death row for
ordering the killing of a mall security guard who witnessed a drug deal
gone bad.

Tarus Sales, who lived in Nashville until he was taken into custody by
Texas authorities, was sentenced to death Saturday by a Harris County jury
that convicted him of capital murder last month.

The jury, which spent three days last week deliberating his sentence, had
the option of sentencing Sales to life in prison or death.

Prosecutors said Sales ordered friends William Herschel Ostine and Cheryl
Kissentaner, both from Tennessee, to kill Tyrone Butler, 33, who witnessed
a shootout in a Houston mall parking lot in February 2000.

Testimony during Sales' trial revealed he had been arrested 19 times since
he turned 13.

Butler, of Houston, was fatally shot on July 21, 2000, while he was stopped
at a Houston intersection.