A lawyer for death row inmate Christa Pike had to call an ambulance herself after a botched execution, with 911 dispatch recordings showing first responders initially dismissed the emergency as a false alarm.
Pike, sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, became the first person to survive a lethal injection after receiving two doses of pentobarbital. The execution attempt took place on September 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
Dispatcher dismissed initial call as false
The first call from the scene came at 8.40pm, just over an hour after the attempted lethal injection began. The caller, whose name and title were redacted, told a dispatcher that an execution had been attempted but the person was still alive. However, the caller could not provide a code to verify the request's legitimacy.
"Per supervisors here at the DEC (Department of Emergency Communications) we have been informed it is a false call," a dispatcher said at 9.03pm. "There is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison."
Lawyer's personal call for help
Pike's lawyer, Kelly Gleason, made a personal call to emergency services after initial reports from the prison were dismissed. She said: "My client, Christa Gail Pike, is undergoing a state execution. She has completed the stages of the protocol and last we knew from the attorney who is present, she is still alive and breathing and needs immediate life-saving care."
It was not until about 9.11pm, roughly half an hour after the initial call, that prison officials confirmed the emergency was real and allowed responders through the gates. An ambulance entered at about that time, and Pike was taken to hospital.
Confusion among responders
As responders worked to verify the call, they contacted prison Central Control representatives, who said they "would have been the ones to call in" and "did not make that call," according to a recording time-stamped at 9.07pm. Around the same time, a first responder said over the radio: "Somebody is outside the gate at the prison telling us that it's real and demanding us to go in. They say they are some sort of state official. I need somebody to get out to the gate and talk to those people."
The Nashville Department of Emergency Communications released the audio recordings with some redactions. Police said the audio from the first 911 call was exempt from public disclosure under state law.
Aftermath and review
Pike was put on a ventilator, which her lawyers said they did not expect her to survive, before she woke up and was discharged from hospital on October 10 and returned to prison. The Tennessee Department of Correction has not said what went wrong in the attempted execution. Governor Bill Lee paused further execution attempts pending a review, and it remains unclear whether the state will try to execute Pike again.
Medical experts have suggested possible explanations for Pike's survival, including drug quality issues and IV line placement causing the drug to pool in tissue. Before the attempt, Pike's attorneys had told courts and prison officials she had a blood disorder that could cause clotting at injection sites. Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend tortured and murdered Slemmer, whom they met at a job camp for troubled teenagers, and became the youngest woman sentenced to death the following year.
