Newly released 911 calls show nearly 30 minutes of confusion after Christa Pike survived two lethal injections, with crews delayed while officials questioned if the emergency was real.
Emergency crews sat outside a Nashville prison on the night of Sept. 30 while dispatchers, prison staff, and supervisors argued over whether a call about a failed execution was genuine. Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, had already received two doses of pentobarbital and was still breathing.
ABC News reported that Metro Nashville Emergency Communications Center released audio and a written account of the calls, capturing the scramble that followed the halted lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
Pike had been convicted in the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Tennessee set out to carry out a lawful death sentence. What followed was a protocol breakdown, a verification mess, and a medical response that took far too long to reach the chamber.
The first 911 call came in at 8:40 p.m. CT. An unidentified caller from Riverbend laid out the situation in plain terms.
The caller told dispatch:
"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 dispatcher pressed for a verification code. The caller did not have one.
"How do they not have a code?"
Asked about breathing, the caller said it was “very labored and slow.” Asked about chest pain, the caller answered that the person was “not conscious.”
That should have triggered an immediate medical response. Instead, the system started checking itself.
Fox News reported that operators openly weighed whether the call was a prank or a “swatting” attempt. One operator said crews were trying to learn if the report was “an actual thing that is happening” or someone faking an emergency at the prison.
Around 9 p.m., Metro Nashville reached out to Tennessee Department of Correction Central Control to verify what the center called a failed execution. A Central Control voice said no one from their facility had called. Responders remained standing by.
A woman from the emergency center told Central Control, “We have responders that are standing by,” and added, “We're just trying to verify.”
By about 9:03 p.m., the response had been pulled back. The New York Post reported an unidentified person stating supervisors had ruled it a false call and that no medical help was needed at Riverbend.
"Per supervisors here at the DEC [Department of Emergency Communications], we have been informed it is a false call. There is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison."
A condemned inmate had been injected with a lethal dose. She was still alive. And the official word, for a stretch of critical minutes, was that nothing was wrong.
Kelly Gleason, an attorney with the Tennessee Office of the Post Conviction Defender, called 911 at 9:08 p.m. CT. She told operators Pike was “still alive and breathing, and needs immediate life-saving care.” Gleason also said Pike was “not awake, and she was snoring.”
Three minutes later, the emergency center contacted Tennessee Highway Patrol dispatch and asked for a trooper so EMS could enter the prison. The front gate, according to the released audio, was telling crews the need was real and not a hoax. Even so, EMS could not go in without an officer on scene.
The Washington Examiner reported a roughly 30-minute delay in treatment after the failed lethal injection, matching the timeline in the 911 traffic from the first call to cleared entry.
Fox News reported hospital transfer by 9:34 p.m. Emergency vehicles finally rolled in after the execution attempt had already been halted.
The New York Post account filled in hard details about what happened inside before the calls went out. Pike was strapped to a gurney for about an hour. Staff made at least seven needle attempts. One needle bent.
She received two lethal injections of pentobarbital and survived both. The Death Penalty Information Center said she is the first person reported to have survived lethal injection after the drugs were given. Its executive director called the episode unlike other failed executions in the modern era. That group opposes capital punishment; the underlying fact of survival is not in dispute.
Pike’s attorneys said she was placed on a ventilator, regained consciousness nearly a week later, and was later released from the hospital and sent back to prison. They also alleged burns on her arms from the pentobarbital and described cognitive problems. Those medical claims come from her legal team.
In the months before the attempt, her lawyers had warned that the medications carried a serious risk of pain and suffering. The released calls do not settle why the drugs failed to kill her. They do show how long it took the state to treat the woman it had just tried to execute.
Gov. Bill Lee ordered a temporary halt to scheduled executions in Tennessee after the Riverbend attempt. His office appointed former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to run an independent review. The review is to determine whether the protocol was followed and whether more steps are needed to keep the state’s process lawful and effective.
Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada announced his resignation earlier in the month tied to the article’s timing. Pike’s attorneys called on Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole.
Commutation is a political ask. The core public question is narrower and harder to dodge: a lawful sentence was underway, the inmate did not die, and first responders spent precious minutes blocked by missing codes, conflicting word from Central Control, and a false-call ruling that should never have been issued.
Metro Nashville said the initial 911 call was exempt from full public release under Tennessee law and that staff prepared a written account from the audio in a good-faith effort to document what was said. The fragments that were released are damning enough on process grounds alone.
Colleen Slemmer was 19 when she was murdered in 1995. Pike was convicted and sentenced to death. Families of murder victims are told the justice system will finish the job the jury started.
What the 911 record shows is not mercy and not drama. It shows a state apparatus that could not complete an execution cleanly and then could not clear an ambulance through the gate without a half-hour of doubt, contradiction, and bureaucratic self-checking.
If Tennessee is going to maintain capital punishment, it owes the public a protocol that works, a chain of command that answers the phone the same way twice, and a verification system that does not mistake a dying inmate for a prank call. Anything less cheats victims, confuses responders, and turns a solemn sentence into a spectacle of incompetence.
Lawful punishment demands competence. Tennessee still has to prove it can deliver either.
