Newly released 911 audio captures the confusion that unfolded when Tennessee prison officials sought emergency assistance after Christa Pike survived a botched execution. At one point, a dispatcher wondered whether the call was a prank.
Pike, who was sentenced to death for the gruesome 1995 killing of a college classmate, survived two doses of the lethal-injection drug pentobarbital on Sept. 30. She is the first death row inmate known to have survived an execution attempt involving the drug.
The first 911 call was placed at about 8:40 p.m., roughly an hour after Pike received the initial dose. The caller said the 50-year-old had been given “10 grams of pentobarbital” for an execution but needed an ambulance because “the person is not yet deceased.”
The caller could not provide the verification code required to confirm the emergency was legitimate. At 8:49 p.m., the dispatcher contacted Tennessee Department of Correction Central Control to determine whether the report was genuine.
“We are trying to find out if that is an actual thing that is happening and we need to send an ambulance” or “if this is someone that is basically prank-calling or like swatting us,” the dispatcher said.
While trying to obtain confirmation, the dispatcher said at around 9:03 p.m. that she had “been informed it is a false call” and that “there is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison,” according to the recording.
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Only minutes later, however, a responder said someone at the prison entrance was insisting that the emergency was real.
“Somebody is outside the gate at the prison telling us that it’s real and demanding us to go in. They say they are some sort of state official. I need somebody to get out to the gate and talk to those people,” the responder said.
According to the call logs, prison officials did not confirm that the request for medical assistance was legitimate until 9:11 p.m.
Pike remained strapped to a gurney in the death chamber for about an hour as medical staff attempted to administer the drugs with at least seven needles. Her attorney, Randy Spivey, said one needle bent to a full 90-degree angle as it was removed from her arm.
Witnesses were quickly escorted from the viewing room after reporting loud snores coming from behind a curtain. Pike was taken to a hospital unconscious, while her lawyers feared she might be brain dead. She regained consciousness six days later.
Pike was released from the hospital on Saturday and returned to prison, where she remains under medical care, her lawyers said.
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