'The State Owes Me a Big Apology': Christa Pike's Victim's Mother 'Broke Down in Tears' After Witnessing Failed Execution in Tennessee

May Martinez, whose daughter, Colleen Slemmer, was murdered by Christa Pike in 1995, is frustrated after she watched Pike survive a failed lethal injection.

“I think that the state owes me a big apology,” Martinez said a day after the botched execution on Wednesday, September 30.

Martinez and her husband drove 11 hours from Orange Park, Fla., to Nashville to observe Pike’s execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Instead of seeing the execution carried out, she watched as Pike survived two injections of pentobarbital.

“It’s hard. I broke down in tears,” Martinez spilled. “She was laying on the table, talking, still laughing, picking up her head.”

Martinez talked about the experience during her trip back home on Thursday, October 1. She asked the public for help with travel costs, and people in Jacksonville donated more than $2,500 to fund her trip to Nashville, according to a report.

Martinez said that no one from the state apologized for what happened.

“No, sir. Nobody apologized,” she said of the situation. “And as a mother, I failed her.”

Martinez was upset about how she and her husband were treated while waiting at the prison prior to the attempted lethal injection.

“I said, ‘Here we are, 31 years, and you’re laughing in my face again,’" she lamented, looking back at the situation and how it unfolded.

Martinez stated that she felt uneasy once she learned that Pike was to be moved to a hospital after the failed execution. “I said, ‘I don’t agree with what you guys are doing. Now I have to worry about her being out’ … And then I brought up, ‘Is she going to come back to the prison?’” she recalled.

Pike stayed for more than a week at an off-site medical facility before being returned to prison, and it remains uncertain whether the state will attempt to carry out the death sentence again.

Martinez said she was told, “I don’t know what we’re doing with her yet,” and when asked what would happen next, she replied, “No, I don’t. She killed my daughter and I don’t want to see another child or another person hurt like she did.”

Martinez revealed she watched Pike “very, very carefully” from the witness room. She has previously called the failed execution “a mess” and said that Pike didn’t display remorse during the execution attempt.

She doesn’t think she would return if Tennessee decides to try to execute Pike again.

“All I wanted was justice,” Martinez insisted.

Now, she’s contemplating legal action to find out what happened inside the execution chamber.

After Pike regained consciousness on Tuesday, October 6, Martinez said she always knew Pike wouldn’t die and acknowledged that Pike may survive if the state tries to execute her again. When asked what she’d like to happen next, she replied, “It doesn’t matter what I think; they’re going to do what they’re going to do.”

Gov. Bill Lee has put a halt on the state’s remaining executions for this year and ordered an independent review of the failed execution. Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for killing Slemmer, a 19-year-old fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps who Pike believed was trying to steal her boyfriend.