Christa Pike speaks for first time but has no memory of botched execution

FILE PHOTO: Death row inmate Christa Pike, held at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution (RMSI) in Tennessee and convicted of murdering a schoolmate three decades ago, who is due to be executed by lethal injection on September 30, 2026 is shown in this 2023 Tennessee Department of Correction booking photograph. Tennessee Department of Correction/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. QUALITY FROM SOURCE./File Photo

Murderer Christa Pike has said her first words in hospital after she was given two lethal injections which failed to kill her.

Pike, 50, was taken to hospital and put on a ventilator after she somehow survived two doses of the lethal injection on Wednesday.

She is now awake and speaking, with her representative saying she is able to communicate in a ‘basic way’ but has no memory of the execution.

This includes giving her name and making incorrect guesses about the date.

Pike reportedly remains handcuffed to her bed, and it is not known whether Tennessee officials will try to execute her again.

She was handed the death sentence after murdering her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995.

Hospital staff are trying to remove the deadly drug from Pike’s body, a process which they expect to take a week.

Dr Joel Zivot, a professor of anesthesiology, said the development ‘bodes well for a good recovery.’

Enterprise News and Pictures 30/9/26 Pic shows: Colleen Slemmer,19, victim killed by Christa Gail Pike, now 50, who will be put to death for a 1995 murder she committed at the age of 18. She will become the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in at least 200 years and is scheduled to die by lethal injection today. Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of stabbing and beating Colleen Slemmer, their 19-year-old classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. She is due to be executed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday morning. Pike has not denied the killing but said she was ???a mentally ill 18-year-old kid??? at the time. She added: ???It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I???d done. ???Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone???s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime..??? See story...

But, he added, it could be weeks or months before anyone knows exactly what her recovery might look like, and whether her competency could be restored to a level that might enable the state to try again to execute her.

‘She’s still in the ICU,’ he said.

‘She has recovered to a certain degree that she’s able to be off a ventilator and able to speak, but in no way would I announce her free of further serious risk.

‘There’s still a lot of bad things that can happen here, even when everyone is doing their job well.’

Before the dose was administered at around 7.27pm, Pike was strapped to a gurney and is reported as saying, ‘I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love’.

She then remained awake and at one point asked if her arm was supposed to feel that way.

At 8.26pm, execution witnesses reported a second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.

Pike was then heard snoring before the microphone was cut off at 8.53pm.

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Original source Christa Pike speaks for first time but has no memory of botched execution

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