DEATH row inmate Christa Pike is back in prison and reportedly using her tablet 10 days after her botched execution.
Pike, 50, was left on a ventilator for several days before she woke up after surviving two rounds of the lethal injection.
She was set to be the first woman in Tennessee to be executed in over 200 years on September 30, but she was rushed to the hospital after she survived two full doses of pentobarbital.
She was unconscious for nearly a week before she woke up disoriented, asking first “Where am I?” and “Who are you?”
The convicted killer was discharged from the hospital on Saturday and returned to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, where she has been held for the last 30 years.
At 12:14am on Saturday, Pike reportedly sent a text message on the tablet she uses in prison.
“I’m at the prison. I love you so much!” she wrote, according to a photo obtained by NewsNation’s Brian Entin.
Who Pike sent the message to was not immediately clear.
Pike’s legal team said she is receiving medical care at the prison.
“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances,” her attorneys said in a statement on Saturday.
Pike sat on death row for three decades for the murder of her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer.
In 1995, she lured Slemmer to a wooded area on the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus before she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, tortured and beat her.
Shipp then carved a satanic pentagram into Slemmer’s forehead and chest, and Pike bludgeoned her to death with a chunk of asphalt before taking part of her skull as a souvenir.
Shipp remains in prison on a life sentence, where he will be up for parole again in 2031, and their friend Shadolla Peterson, who reportedly acted as a lookout, pleaded guilty to being an accessory and has since built a career in the beauty industry, The U.S. Sun previously revealed.
What happens to Pike next remains uncertain, as there is a chance she could face a second execution.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has pressed pause on all remaining executions in the state for 2026 and has called for a full review of Pike’s failed attempt.
The inmate’s health could play a major role in whether the state tries to execute Pike again, Dr Joe Zivot, a medical advisor on Pike’s case, told The Sun.
Zivot explained if she “returns to her normal neurologic self,” such as knowing who and where she is and what she’s done, then she “certainly faces the prospect of another attempt at executing her.”
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/17134110/christa-pike-text-returned-prison-failed-execution/
