Christa Pike revealed what lethal injection felt like in her body during botched execution
Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual abuse which some readers may find distressing.
Christa Gail Pike described a terrifying sensation in her arm as Tennessee officials attempted to execute her by lethal injection, before the procedure was ultimately abandoned.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to be put to death on Wednesday (30 September) for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a killing she committed when she was 18.
She does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue that the state should consider Pike’s age at the time, mental illness and a history of severe sexual abuse that included being raped from the time she was a toddler.
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She entered the execution chamber and delivered the final words she had prepared: "I'm going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is with love.
READ MORE: Full timeline of Christa Pike case as she's hospitalised after surviving attempted execution
"I'm at peace, I'm ready to be free. This is a happy day."
She then repeated a message alongside Reverend Mikey Noechel, saying: "May you be at peace. May you be kind and gentle to yourself."
Pike also directed the message towards the 'people behind the glass', before she and the reverend sang a song containing the words 'I love you'.
But as the lethal injection procedure continued, Pike pointed to a spot on her arm and said it felt as though it was about to burst.
She asked the reverend whether that was supposed to happen, with him telling her to relax.
"I'm trying," Pike replied, as her breathing became more laboured.
Tori Gessner, a reporter and anchor at WKRN in Nashville who has witnessed five executions in Tennessee, later described what happened at a news conference.
"Nothing about today was normal, typical, at all," Gessner said, via NBC News.
Gessner said Pike was heard at 7:34 pm saying: "My arm feels like it's about to burst open."
Pike then referred to the same spot on her arm and asked: "Does this happen like that?"
The execution team administered two doses of pentobarbital, according to court filings from Pike's lawyers.
However, Pike remained alive.
Witnesses later heard her snoring behind the closed curtain, with the microphone eventually cut off at 8:53 pm.
Her lawyers said Pike was taken from the prison by ambulance after the failed execution and said she was still alive and loudly snoring.
"We have not been informed as to her condition," her lawyers said in a statement.
Robin M Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, described what happened as 'singular and unparalleled', saying no one had previously survived after receiving the drugs used in such executions.
Pike's lawyers had warned about difficulties accessing her veins and argued that the state's execution protocol left her without appropriate emergency medical care.
The execution had already been thrown into uncertainty earlier that day when a federal appeals court issued a stay shortly before it was due to begin.
The US Supreme Court later overturned the stay, allowing Tennessee officials to proceed.
Pike's lawyers subsequently filed emergency motions seeking to halt the execution, arguing that she had endured unnecessary agony and that the state should begin lifesaving treatment.
Governor Bill Lee ordered a third-party review into what happened and said scheduled executions would not be carried out in Tennessee for the rest of the year.
Pike was convicted alongside her boyfriend over Slemmer's killing at a job training facility in Knoxville.
The case attracted national attention after a pentagram was carved into Slemmer's body, amid the wider Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s.
The failed attempt was also Tennessee's second failed execution attempt in 2026.
In May, officials called off Tony Carruthers' lethal injection after executioners spent more than an hour trying unsuccessfully to establish an IV.
Rhiannon Ingle