Emergency help for Christa Pike was delayed after confusion among first responders and Tennessee prison officials following her failed execution on September 30, according to 911 recordings obtained by The Associated Press.
What happened to Christa Pike?
The first call was released only as a written transcript. Central Control confirmed a few minutes later that the call was real. The delay was caused by confusion among first responders and Tennessee prison officials. Precious minutes passed as officials and responders tried to find out if the request for help from the execution chamber was real. This was just over an hour after the attempted lethal injection began. The caller could not give a code that would help prove the request was real. The caller’s name and title were blacked out. There is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison. they spoke with people from the prison’s Central Control While responders tried to check the call. They say they are some sort of state official. I need somebody to get out to the gate and talk to those people. Tennessee’s rules call for a second dose if the first dose does not cause death. However, they do not explain what officials should do if an inmate survives both doses. Pike spent several days on a ventilator in the hospital.
Emergency help for Christa Pike was delayed after her failed execution last month, according to 911 dispatch recordings. The first 911 call came in at 8:40pm on September 30. At 9:03pm, a dispatcher said, “Per supervisors here at the DEC (Department of Emergency Communications) we have been informed it is a false call. This cleared the way for responders to go through the gates at about 9:11pm It was about half an hour after the first call. An ambulance and fire trucks were seen reach the building inside the prison campus at 9:14pm. Pike, 50, was taken to the hospital after she survived two doses of pentobarbital. The state was trying to execute her for the 1995 killing of classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 at the time. On Saturday, they said she had been discharged from the hospital and returned to the women’s prison where she had been held for 30 years. (With AP inputs)
It said Pike was unconscious and not breathing normally. The caller told a dispatcher that they were at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where they had tried to execute someone, but she was still alive. They said they “would have been the ones to call in and they 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. Her lawyers said she regained consciousness last Tuesday, began speaking a little and could walk with help.
