OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA A 61-year-old Oklahoman who gunned down one man and seriously injured two other people in a shooting spree at a bar more than 20 years ago was executed by lethal injection late Thursday, officials said.

D.L. "Wayne" Jones was pronounced dead at 9:16 p.m. (0316 GMT) at the Oklahoma State penitentiary in Mcalester southeast of here, according to the Oklahoma attorney general's office.

"Well, I guess I'm going to get out of here before something bad happens. So long," were his last words, said Charlie Smith, a public information officer for the state attorney general's office.

He was the eighth inmate executed in Oklahoma so far this year.

Jones was convicted for killing Stanley Buck, 48, in an unprovoked attack at the Wichita Lounge Bar in Lawton, Oklahoma, on August 14, 1979. Jones also wounded Buck's son, Stanley, who remains partially paralyzed, and Betty Strain, who is now deceased, the AFP said.

His extraordinarily long stint on death row made him the longest serving death row inmate in Oklahoma. State and Federal Law Reforms introduced in 1995 and 1996 have sped up that process, reducing the average appeal period from 12 years to six, the attorney general's office said Thursday.