Christa Pike's first message after surviving botched execution and returning to prison
Thought to be the only person to have survived an execution attempt by lethal injection, Christa Pike was sent back to prison at the weekend.
Having stunned experts, medical staff and her lawyers, she then sent a first message as she was sent back to prison.
Pike’s team explained she would continue to receive medical care there as her recovery had been described as ‘medically unprecedented’.
It was reported when she regained consciousness that she was able to recall her name and communicate in a ‘basic way’.
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And now she has sent a message from her tablet, confirming that she was back in the women’s prison in Nashville, Tennessee. The 50-year-old has been held here for decades, as she was sentenced to death after murdering Colleen Slemmer with her then-boyfriend in 1995.
Dr Bill Kimberlin is a professor, researcher and author who is an expert in capital punishment. He has interviewed multiple people on death row and has confirmed to LADbible that a text message was sent directly by Pike from prison at 12:14am local time Saturday morning (10 October).
He said a message was sent from her tablet to a source, reading: “Im at the prison. I love you so much!”
Pike was taken to hospital on 30 September after the state of Tennessee gave her two doses of fatal doses of pentobarbital, both of which failed.
She regained consciousness earlier last week before being discharged at the weekend.
"Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Centre, where she has been housed for more than 30 years," the statement, shared by Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, and Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason from the TN Office of the Post Conviction Defender, read.
It added that Pike was ‘grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances’.
“She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery,” the statement said.
Her lawyers previously said she faced a ‘long road to recovery’.
When Pike was 18, she and Tadaryl Shipp, 17, beat, tortured and killed Slemmer, 19. Her then-boyfriend was spared the death penalty because he was not yet legally an adult and remains in prison.
The victim's mum, May Martinez, has called the execution attempt a 'mess'.
"They didn’t say anything, and then, all of a sudden, they asked all the victims to leave. And we left," she told NBC News.
“We didn’t know anything until we got up to the office and saw the commissioner. And he said that it didn’t work, that it didn’t work, and she’s on her way to the hospital.”
Jess Battison