911 recordings reveal confusion among first responders and prison staff after Christa Pike survived execution attempt

Nearly half an hour passed before first responders rushed to the scene of Christa Pike’s failed execution last month, after a police dispatcher believed the phone call requesting an ambulance at the execution chamber was fake. 

Pike, 50, received two doses of pentobarbital as Tennessee state officials tried to execute her for the 1995 stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer on September 30.

But she was still breathing in the aftermath.

The unusual chain of events left prison officials and first responders confused about what to do in the aftermath, according to newly-released dispatch audio transcripts.

It shows that the first 911 call came in at 8.40pm, just one hour after the attempted lethal injection got underway.

‘We’ve been carrying out an execution tonight. We’ve administered 10 grams of pentobarbital. The person is not yet deceased,’ the caller said as he asked for an ambulance.

The dispatcher then replied by asking the caller for a verification code for agencies to confirm to one another that a call is not a false report, which the caller did not have.

At that point, the dispatcher called the Tennessee Department of Correction Central Control at 8.59 to verify the call’s authenticity – only to be told that nobody from that office had called police about a botched execution. 

Then, at 9.03pm, the dispatcher told the caller ‘we have been informed it is a false call’ and ‘there is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison.’ 

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.’

As emergency responders worked to verify the call, they were in touch with representatives of the prison’s Central Control, who 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.

A few minutes later, Central Control confirmed the call was legitimate and cleared the way for responders to enter at 9.11pm.

Pike was on a ventilator for several days and, at one point, her attorneys did not expect her to survive. She regained consciousness last Tuesday and began talking limitedly and walking with assistance, they said. Pike was discharged from the hospital and returned to the women´s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her lawyers said Saturday.

The Tennessee Department of Correction has not said what went wrong in the attempted execution. Medical experts have raised a few possibilities that could explain how Pike was able to survive, including potential drug quality issues and the placement of IV lines causing the drug to pool in her tissue.