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911 recordings indicate 'false call' confusion delayed emergency help after Christa Pike's failed execution
911 recordings show that help for Christa Pike was delayed by about half an hour after her failed execution because responders were unsure if the call was real.
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Emergency help for Christa Pike was delayed after confusion among first responders and Tennessee prison officials following her failed execution on September 30, according to 911 recordings obtained by The Associated Press.
What the 911 recordings show
Emergency help for Christa Pike was delayed after her failed execution last month, according to 911 dispatch recordings. The delay was caused by confusion among first responders and Tennessee prison officials.
Precious minutes passed as officials and responders tried to find out if the request for help from the execution chamber was real.
How the confusion began
The first 911 call came in at 8:40pm on September 30. This was just over an hour after the attempted lethal injection began. The caller could not give a code that would help prove the request was real.
The first call was released only as a written transcript. It said Pike was unconscious and not breathing normally.
The caller’s name and title were blacked out. The caller told a dispatcher that they were at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where they had tried to execute someone, but she was still alive.
Also read: Christa Pike update: Where is she now after hospital discharge?
Dispatcher said it was a “false call”
At 9:03pm, a dispatcher said, “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.”
While responders tried to check the call, they spoke with people from the prison’s Central Control. They said they “would have been the ones to call in and they did not make that call,” according to a recording time-stamped at 9:07pm.
Around the same time, a first responder said over the radio, “Somebody is outside the gate at the prison telling us that it’s real and demanding us to go in. They say they are some sort of state official. I need somebody to get out to the gate and talk to those people.”
Central Control confirmed a few minutes later that the call was real. This cleared the way for responders to go through the gates at about 9:11pm It was about half an hour after the first call.
An ambulance and fire trucks were seen reach the building inside the prison campus at 9:14pm.
What happened to Christa Pike?
Pike, 50, was taken to the hospital after she survived two doses of pentobarbital. The state was trying to execute her for the 1995 killing of classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 at the time.
Tennessee's rules call for a second dose if the first dose does not cause death. However, they do not explain what officials should do if an inmate survives both doses.
Pike spent several days on a ventilator in the hospital. Her lawyers said she regained consciousness last Tuesday, began speaking a little and could walk with help. On Saturday, they said she had been discharged from the hospital and returned to the women's prison where she had been held for 30 years.
(With AP inputs)
