911 calls following Christa Pike’s two lethal injections reveal the delay in her receiving care

Christa Pike is a Tennessee inmate who was sentenced to death and was supposed to be executed by lethal injection on September 30 for her role in the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Pike received two lethal injections on September 30, but she survived both of them and needed to be transported to a hospital for emergency care.

Now, the recordings of the 911 calls that were made after the botched injections have been released, and they reveal that there was a significant delay between the injections and Pike receiving the medical care she needed.

First responders believed the initial call was fake

AP News was able to obtain the call recordings, and the BBC broke down the calls, their contents, and timestamped when they took place during the night of the botched execution. The initial call was made at 8:40 p.m. and included the caller saying, “We’ve been carrying out an execution tonight. We’ve administered 10 grams of pentobarbital. The person is not yet deceased. That started approximately one hour ago. And we’re calling for an ambulance.”

Released communications from the Nashville Department of Emergency Services reveal that the delay in providing care for Pike was due to the EMS (emergency medical services) allegedly trying to verify that the call was legitimate.

Prison staff members who were not involved with the execution allegedly made it more difficult to verify, as the workers in the prison’s central command said that they would’ve been the ones to call for EMS if something happened in the prison, but they didn’t make a call that night.

It took 31 minutes to verify the call

At around 9:11 p.m., prison officials verified that there was a call from the workers involved in the execution. Once it was verified, they allowed the EMS workers through the prison gate, which finally allowed Pike to get medical care, as her continued suffering from the failed injections would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Pike woke up six days later in the hospital, and her recovery has been largely considered miraculous, although the extent to which she will be able to recover isn’t yet known.

Now, the question is whether Pike will have her sentence changed to a life sentence due to the failure of the state to carry out the execution, or if the state will attempt to execute Pike a third time. The investigation into how the execution went wrong is ongoing.

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]