‘LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY’

Attorneys Reveal Woman’s First Words After Botched Execution

Christa Pike is the first known prisoner to survive a lethal injection.

Christa Pike, a Tennessee death row inmate who survived a failed execution last week, is awake and conscious.

Pike, 50, would have been the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Her first words, the New York Post reports, were “Where am I and who are you?”

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According to the BBC, Pike’s attorney Randy Spivey told reporters there is “still a lot of cognitive confusion” and a “long road to recovery,” but that Pike is “very aware of what they did to her.”

She survived two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital, leaving her injured and on a ventilator, ABC reported.

According to CNN, Pike’s attorneys believed her to be brain dead just hours before she woke up and began talking.

They say she has a blood clot in one of her arms, is unable to swallow or eat, and was left with pneumonia after the failed execution.

They also revealed that she is still shackled to her hospital bed.

Pike had been on Death Row for 30 years, after murdering her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer as a teen in 1995. She is the first-ever prisoner to survive a lethal injection.

“What happened to Christa was exactly what the state was warned would happen, and there are so many questions that need to be answered, not by Christa but by the state of Tennessee,” Spivey said at a news conference.

Pike’s attorneys had warned that difficult IV access and blown veins could complicate the execution.

Her execution was temporarily halted by a federal appeals court stay just an hour before it was initially set to be carried out.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti successfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the stay and allow the execution to move forward.

The failed attempt took about an hour, Spivey told reporters. He counted at least seven needles, he said, “one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her arm after an unsuccessful attempt.”

Following the botched injections, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called off Pike’s execution and postponed all state killings for the rest of the year.

On Wednesday, Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles ordered that all evidence, including recordings, witness accounts, emails, along with drugs, syringes, IV lines and other medical items, be preserved while an investigation takes place into the botched execution.

Pike’s was the second botched execution in Tennessee this year, after the state failed to carry out a lethal injection on Tony Carruthers on May 21. The execution team failed to insert a backup IV line despite trying for more than an hour. Gov. Lee granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve after the failed execution.

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Evgenia AnastasakosBreaking News Intern

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