<p>There was a 30-minute delay in treating convicted murderer Christa Pike after her failed execution on September 30, according to emergency 911 calls between first responders and Tennessee prison officials.</p>
<p>Pike, 50, received two doses of a lethal injection but survived both injections. The reasons for this outcome remain unclear. Confusion appears to be a recurring theme surrounding Pike’s execution attempt, as evidenced by the events that followed.</p>
<p>The 911 call recordings, reported by the Associated Press, indicated that first responders and prison officials were uncertain whether a request for emergency assistance from within the execution chamber was legitimate.</p>
<p>The first 911 call was made at 8:40 p.m., over an hour after the attempted lethal injection began. The caller stated that they had tried to execute Pike, but she was still alive. The dispatcher requested a code to verify the legitimacy of the call, but the caller did not provide one.</p>
<p>“Per supervisors here at the [Department of Emergency Communications], we have been informed it is a false call,” a dispatcher stated at 9:03 p.m. “There is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison.”</p>
<p>Four minutes later, a responder reported, “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.”</p>
<p>The responders were in contact with prison officials, who stated at 9:07 p.m. that they “would have been the ones to call in and they did not make that call.”</p>
<p>By 9:11 p.m., emergency responders were cleared to enter the facility after prison officials confirmed the legitimacy of the call.</p>
<p>After a half hour of miscommunication, Pike was promptly hospitalized and placed on a ventilator. She suffered severe arm injuries, burns, blisters, and a blood clot because the drugs reportedly pooled into her tissue and did not enter her bloodstream. The Tennessee Department of Correction has not confirmed the reasons for the execution's failure.</p>
<p>Pike’s lawyers indicated she was discharged from the hospital on Saturday and returned to the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she has been incarcerated for 30 years for a 1995 murder in which she and her boyfriend, both teenagers at the time, tortured and killed their classmate in a case noted for its brutality.</p>
<p>Pike slashed 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer with a box cutter and meat cleaver, carved a satanic pentagram symbol into her chest, smashed her head with a rock, and took a fragment of her skull as a souvenir. Pike committed the crime out of intense romantic jealousy over Slemmer, who allegedly attempted to gain her boyfriend’s attention.</p>
<p>It remains unclear whether Tennessee officials will proceed with a follow-up execution. Pike’s attorneys are requesting that Governor Bill Lee commute her death sentence. Days before the execution attempt, Lee rejected a clemency request.</p>