Dispatch audio from a 911 call reveals that murderer Christa Pike’s emergency help got delayed after her botched execution because emergency dispatchers thought it was a prank call.
“Per supervisors here at the DEC (Department of Emergency Communications) we have been informed it is a false call,” said a dispatcher at 9:03 p.m. on September 30, the night of Pike’s planned execution, according to the Associated Press. “There is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison.”
The first 911 call occurred at 8:40 p.m., and dispatchers worked for around 20 minutes trying to verify that the request was legitimate, according to the News & Observer. First responders were initially stuck outside the gates because prison officials had not provided them with a code for entry.
“There’s someone at the front gate telling them that this is real and they need to enter, but they can’t enter without police because we never got codes,” dispatch said in another call.
About 30 minutes later, prison officials finally affirmed the call was real, allowing first responders through the prison’s gates.
Pike, 50, was hospitalized after surviving two doses of pentobarbital, the drug used in lethal injections that typically results in death within 15 to 30 minutes. After receiving care following the failed injections, Pike was discharged from the hospital and returned to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances. She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery,” her attorneys said in a statement.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of her fellow Knoxville Job Corps Center student, Colleen Slemmer. Pike suspected Slemmer was romantically interested in her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Pike, Shipp, and their friend Shadolla Peterson lured Slemmer to a secluded area, where she was tortured for more than 30 minutes and beaten to death with a chunk of asphalt.
Pike’s execution was initially halted one hour before her it was originally scheduled after a divided 6th Circuit panel issued a temporary stay to review claims that the jury that sentenced Pike had not heard about Pike’s childhood sexual abuse. Pike’s attorneys presented evidence that Pike was assaulted beginning when she was just 2 years old. They also said that at 11, she was raped by a neighbor and then again by her mother’s live-in boyfriend.
After Pike’s execution, Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee paused all executions in the state through the end of the year and ordered an investigation into the failed execution.
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