The mother of Christa Pike's victim has disclosed she almost pursued vigilante justice after watching her daughter's killer endure a failed execution attempt this week.
Christa Pike was scheduled for execution on Wednesday evening for the brutal murder of Colleen Slemmer in January 1995. Yet, despite being administered two doses of lethal injection, she remains unresponsive though not in a coma following the botched procedure, during which her solicitor claims she was jabbed with a needle seven times.
Failed Execution Details
Pike was set to become the first woman put to death in the US state in two hundred years. In what were meant to be her last words, Pike declared: "I'm going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life - and that is with love."
Now 50 years old, Pike continues to cling to life in a critical state, receiving emergency medical care after withstanding two complete doses of pentobarbital, a lethal substance, during Wednesday evening's failed execution.
Witness Accounts
Eyewitnesses present in the execution chamber observed the curtains shielding Pike from onlookers being closed at 7.46pm, before being pulled back just three minutes afterwards at 7.49pm. They recounted Pike gasping and groaning while thrashing against her bedsheet.
One witness remarked: "Her mouth fell open a few times, and she began to loudly snore. She gasped a few times."
By 8.26pm, those present confirmed the second dose of pentobarbital had been delivered. Yet Pike's snoring remained audible from behind the drawn curtain until the microphone was deactivated at 8.53pm.
Legal and Family Response
At that juncture, an instruction was issued to remove media witnesses from the vicinity. Pike was then transported urgently to a local hospital.
Her lawyer Randy Spivey stated on Thursday: "We don't have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment."
He continued: "But we do know that she is alive right now."
Her defence team contend that the failed execution amounts to "torture", and are demanding her death sentence be commuted. Spivey declared: "I'm haunted by last night. What I saw last night is not something that should ever, ever happen again."
Colleen's mum, May, spoke to PEOPLE while travelling back to Florida from Tennessee. During the conversation, she disclosed she almost dispensed vigilante justice herself.
May admitted: "If I could have gotten in that room, I would have taken the box cutter and cut her up like she did Colleen."
The devastated mother has now lost more than three decades of precious moments. She said: "Well, you miss a lot. You miss the holidays, you miss the birthdays, you miss Mother's Days and stuff like that." May also disclosed that she'd been informed Pike was shackled to a hospital bed under constant police surveillance.
When asked about her feelings the day following the bungled execution, May replied: "I want to go kill Christa. How's that?"
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has subsequently suspended all executions across the state and commissioned an inquiry into Pike's extraordinary botched execution.
