Christa Pike's Emergency Care Delayed After Botched Execution as 911 Call Was Deemed False

The newly released 911 calls from the night Christa Pike’s execution failed show how emergency dispatchers questioned whether the prison had actually called for an ambulance.

At 8:40 p.m. on Wednesday, September 30, a corrections official called 911 about an hour into the execution process.

He told the emergency operator, “The person is not yet deceased.”

The Metro Nashville Emergency Communications Center released a written transcript of that initial phone call, along with audio of additional calls, on Monday, October 12. The center said that, under state law, it can't publicly disclose audio of the initial call.

“We’ve been carrying out an execution tonight. We’ve administered 10 grams of pentobarbital. The person is not yet deceased. That started approximately 1 hour ago. And we’re calling for an ambulance,” the caller said, according to the transcript.

When asked if Pike was breathing normally, the caller told the dispatcher, “No. The breathing is very labored and slow.”

The caller also said, “The person is not conscious.”

The call came more than 30 minutes after media witnesses said they saw Pike gasping for air.

The corrections official who called didn’t have the verification code required for emergency calls from the prison. “My code? For reporting an emergency or do you (want to) know what the emergency is?” the official asked, before adding, “I, I don’t have a code.”

The lack of a code prompted a series of calls as dispatchers tried to verify the request. “How do they not have a code? Is it at Riverbend?” a Nashville Fire Department employee asked a dispatcher, adding, “That’s the one place you definitely need a code.”

When dispatchers contacted the prison to verify the call, one employee told them, “We didn’t call anybody. I would have been the one to call you guys.”

Fire department personnel were then advised over the radio that the call was false. At 9:06 p.m., another caller from the prison requested assistance, saying, “Let me know when you’re ready for the code.” Dispatchers then had to locate someone to escort fire department personnel into the facility, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol initially turned them away.

Pike’s attorney Kelly Gleason called 911 at 9:08 p.m. “What’s going on is my client, Christa Gail Pike, is undergoing a state execution,” Gleason stated.

She told the dispatcher that Pike was “still alive and breathing, and needs immediate life-saving care,” and added that she was “not awake, and she was snoring.”

An ambulance and a fire engine were sent to Riverbend but waited outside the gate because no one could provide them with the code. The ambulance that carried Pike didn’t leave Riverbend until around 9:28 p.m., then redirected from one hospital to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. When asked why the caller didn’t have the code, a Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson said she couldn't comment.

Pike, 50, lived through two doses of pentobarbital and was placed on a ventilator before waking after almost a week. On Saturday, October 10, Pike’s attorneys said that she had left the hospital and returned to prison. The Death Penalty Information Center’s executive director described the attempt as “the worst we’ve ever seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era.”

Gov. Bill Lee has paused executions and appointed former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to lead an independent review of the failed execution, and Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada is resigning. Attorneys for Pike are asking Lee to commute her sentence to life with no chance of parole. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps.