Christa Pike's aunt says ‘God is in control, not the Department of Correction’
The aunt of the death row killer who survived her execution Christa Pike has said she believes the failed lethal injections were all part of ‘God’s will’.
In the first interview given by a member of Pike's family, her aunt Carrie Ross, who helped raise her and 'loves her like a daughter,' said she should not have to face execution a second time because 'the Lord wants her to live’, reports the Daily Mail.
She said, “When God puts his hand on someone, God is in control.
“Not the Department of Correction, not us, but God.”
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She revealed that she had not yet been allowed to speak with her niece and neither had her other relatives since she woke up and began to speak after being unconscious since the execution attempt on September 30.
Pike was rushed to hospital after being administered two doses of the lethal poison pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
She cannot eat or swallow, and both her arms are swollen, according to statements by her lawyers. She is reported to have blood clots in her arm and is suffering from pneumonia.
Her legal team revealed as recently as Monday they believed Pike was ‘brain dead’ and her life support would be switched off the following day.
However, on Tuesday, to their surprise, instead of being allowed to die, they learned Pike was ‘conscious, speaking’.
Her first words upon waking up were reportedly, “Where am I and who are you?”
She was due to become the first woman to be executed by Tennessee in over 200 years. Instead, she became the first person to survive execution after actually being given a lethal injection.
“Christa has a long road to recovery,” her attorney Randy Spivey said.
“She has a blood clot in one of her arms, she has pneumonia,” he added. “She is not able to swallow yet, so she has not eaten.”
Spivey said that Pike also suffered ‘extraordinary’ swelling to her hands, adding that they “looked like if you were to blow up a surgical glove.
“I do not have an explanation for what happened between Monday night and Tuesday morning.”
An anaesthesiologist who has advised Pike’s lawyers, Dr Joel Zivot, told the BBC that Pike “has some memories of being in the hospital but no memory, I believe, of the execution attempt.”
“It’s been up, down, up, down. I have cried more tears in the last week than I’ve cried in my whole life,” Ross said.
“This whole week has been a blur.”
Pike was sentenced to death by a court for the brutal 1995 torture and killing of her classmate Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.
Pike was 18 at the time and the court which convicted her heard she was in a jealous rage when she committed the murder.
Her aunt argues that Pike’s death sentence should be commuted on the grounds ‘she has suffered enough’ and a second attempt would be ‘torture’.
“That would be horrible. Torture. Don’t do that to a human,” Ross said. “She has completed her execution. She went willingly.”
Topics: True Crime, Crime
Michael D. Carroll