Attorney: Christa Pike Is Walking After Botched Execution Attempt

Christa Pike, the Tennessee death row inmate who survived two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital last week, is now “up and walking,” one of her attorneys said.

Stephen Ferrell told BBC Radio 4 early Thursday that Pike is dealing with serious physical injuries. “What’s been described to me is that physically there’s quite a bit going on, that her arms are very injured and she’s not able to use them very much,” he said. Pike walked for the first time that day, though only a short distance around her room.

Ferrell said it was still too early to determine whether Pike had sustained “permanent damage.” He added that her thinking remained “somewhat foggy.”

“She can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she’s going,” Ferrell said.

Neither Ferrell nor a spokesperson for Pike’s legal team immediately responded to requests for comment Thursday morning.

Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist advising Pike’s lawyers, told Fox News on Thursday that he believed she was still being treated in the intensive care unit.

Randy Spivey, another attorney representing Pike, said outside a Nashville courthouse Wednesday that her legal team had not expected her to regain consciousness. By Monday evening, they believed she was “brain dead.”

“To the shock of everyone, including me, including her team and including the medical team, Christa woke up and began talking,” Spivey said. “I do not have an explanation for what happened between Monday night and Tuesday morning, but what we do know is that Christa has a long road to recovery.”

Spivey said Pike’s first words after waking were, “Where am I?” and “Who are you?” He described her as “angry and confused” after the ordeal.

Pike is believed to be the first person in modern history to survive an attempted lethal injection, according to her attorneys and death penalty experts.

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Pike has pneumonia, cannot swallow and developed a blood clot in one arm, Spivey said. He described her hands as appearing “like if you were to blow up a surgical glove” and said he did not know whether she would ever regain full use of them.

Davidson County Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles granted Pike’s emergency request Wednesday to preserve evidence connected to the failed execution.

The order directs the Tennessee Department of Correction to retain physical evidence, including needles, IV lines, drug packaging and the drugs themselves. Officials must also preserve text messages, encrypted communications, photographs and recordings, including messages sent through apps such as Signal.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. Two other people involved in the killing received lesser sentences: one was 17 at the time, while the other testified for the state under a plea agreement.

They were all students at Knoxville’s Job Corps Center, a vocational school for youths from troubled backgrounds.

Slemmer was studying computers, an emerging field at the time, then-Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith told News Outlet previously.

“She was a bright young woman,” he said. “She had interest in computers. She was applying herself there. She was clearly an innocent party in this.”

After slashing her dozens of times, Pike and her accomplices crushed Slemmer’s skull with a chunk of asphalt. Tadaryl Shipp, who is serving a life sentence and is due for his next parole hearing in 2031, carved pentagrams into her chest and face.

A groundskeeper who later discovered the gruesome crime scene initially thought he’d stumbled upon an animal carcass, before he saw Slemmer’s clothes through the blood, according to court records.

What happens next for Pike remains unclear. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has halted executions for the rest of the year.