The mother of Christa Pike's victim has been left furious with prison authorities after the death row murderer survived two execution attempts. Pike, 50, "lost consciousness" and was "audibly snoring" when officials in Tennessee, in the US, administered the second of two lethal injections, with her legal representatives forced to file an emergency motion to stop the attempt. She has since been rushed to hospital, where she is "being provided life-saving measures", and her future is now up in smoke due to the state's execution protocols.
Mother's fury after execution failure
The mum of twisted Pike's victim has come out swinging against state officials, saying "they f***** up" after she was let in the dark about the state of the execution. Speaking to US outlet NBC news, May Martinez, the mum of Colleen Slemmer, who was 19 when she was tortured and brutally killed by Pike in 1995, said she wanted the execution to be carried out. But, she added: "They went to try to execute her, and she didn’t die."
She was left furious with the state's Republican governor Bill Lee, its Department of Correction and attorney general after her daughter's murderer was rushed to hospital. The mum said the killer had never expressed remorse during the attempted execution on Wednesday, and since the twin attempts has received little communication from officials. She said: "They didn’t say anything, and then, all of a sudden, they asked all the victims to leave. And we left."
Execution attempt details
"We didn’t know anything until we got up to the office and saw the commissioner. And he said that it didn’t work ... and she’s on her way to the hospital." When asked what her message to the governor and attorney general was by NBC, furious Martinez replied: "They f----- up." Pike has never denied killing Ms Slemmer, who died more than 30 years ago when she was tortured by the murderer, then 18, and her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp.
Shipp and Pike used boxcutters and a rock to carry out the brutal torture, with the former of the pair carving a pentagram into their victim's chest. Pike is said to have taken a fragment of Ms Slemmer's skull, which she later showed to a friend. Pike, who was later diagnosed with mental health disorders, was convicted of murder in 1996, and placed on Tennessee's death row.
Witnesses describe botched procedure
Pike's execution took place at the Riverbend maximum security institution on Thursday, in the presence of a gallery, including seven journalists. Officials administered the lethal poison pentobarbital, which is meant to induce unconsciousness before quickly causing death. Pike was still awake and snoring around 40 minutes after the drug was administered.
Journalists in attendance described seeing Pike start to snore before corrections officials escorted them and Pike's victims out of the room. John North, a reporter at WBIR, an affiliate of ABC News, said following the execution attempt: "It appears this did not go how this was supposed to go." "When we left the building, so far as we knew, she was probably still alive." Pike's legal team released a statement following their client's botched execution saying their concerns were vindicated.
They said in a statement to the Tennessean: "Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution. We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy."
