911 calls show confusion delayed aid after Christa Pike execution attempt

Emergency responders were delayed for about half an hour after Tennessee’s unsuccessful execution of Christa Pike because dispatchers and prison officials struggled to verify that a request for medical help was legitimate, according to recordings and a transcript released by Nashville emergency officials.

The first 911 call was made at 8:40 p.m. on Sept. 30, just over an hour after the lethal-injection procedure began at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. The unidentified caller said Pike remained alive after being given execution drugs and requested an ambulance, but could not provide a verification code.

Officials contacted several agencies while trying to authenticate the emergency. At 9:03 p.m., a dispatcher said supervisors had been told the call was false and that no medical assistance was needed. Minutes later, a responder at the prison gate reported that a person identifying themselves as a state official was insisting the emergency was real. Prison Central Control initially said it had not placed the call, then confirmed the emergency and cleared responders to enter at about 9:11 p.m.

Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital during the state’s attempt to execute her for the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer. She was hospitalized in critical condition and placed on a ventilator, but later regained consciousness, began speaking and walking with assistance, and was returned to the women’s prison, according to her attorneys. Tennessee prison officials have not publicly explained why the execution failed.