Authorities suspected a false call and delayed aid to Christa Pike after botched execution

The recordings, obtained by The Associated Press through a public records access request, show that precious minutes were wasted as authorities and rescuers tried to determine whether the call for help in the execution chamber was legitimate.

The first 911 call was made at 8:40 pm on September 30, just over an hour after the attempted execution by lethal injection began. Only half an hour later did prison authorities confirm that the call was real and began allowing emergency teams to enter through the prison gates.

Pike, 50, was hospitalized after surviving two doses of pentobarbital administered during the state's attempt to execute her for the 1995 stabbing death of her colleague Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed Slemmer, becoming one of the youngest women to receive a death sentence.

Pike remained on a ventilator for several days, and at one point her lawyers did not believe she would survive. She regained consciousness last Tuesday and began speaking with difficulty and walking with assistance, according to defenders. She was released from the hospital and returned to the women's penitentiary where she had been held for 30 years, her lawyers said on Saturday (10).

The confusion began with the first call to 911. A person, whose name and position were omitted from the recording, claimed to be at the Riverbend Maximum Security Penitentiary and said that they had tried to execute a woman, but she was still alive. The attendant asked for a code to verify the authenticity of the call, but the person did not have this information.

“According to supervisors here at DEC (Department of Emergency Communications), we were informed that this was a fake call,” said a dispatcher at 9:03 p.m. “There is no need for medical assistance at Riverbend Prison.”

Four minutes later, a first responder reported, "There's someone outside the prison gate saying the situation is real and demanding we come in. They say they're some kind of state authority. I need someone to go to the gate and talk to these people."

While emergency teams tried to verify the authenticity of the call, they maintained contact with representatives from the prison's Control Center. According to a recording recorded at 9:07 p.m., these representatives stated that “they were responsible for making the call and that they had not made any call.”

A few minutes later, the Control Center confirmed that the call for help was legitimate and authorized rescuers to enter at 9:11 pm.

The Tennessee Department of Corrections has not said what went wrong in the attempted execution. Medical experts raised some hypotheses that could explain how Pike managed to survive, including possible problems with the quality of the medicine and the positioning of intravenous access, which could have caused the substance to accumulate in the body's tissues, instead of allowing it to circulate properly through the bloodstream.