Christa Pike alarmingly told medical staff she thought her arm would “burst open” and asked if something went wrong during her botched execution in Tennessee, her lawyers said Friday.
Pike, 50, on death row for savagely slaying her classmate in 1995, remains unconscious and intubated after the failed execution attempt in which she was given two lethal doses of pentobarbital — a drug experts compare to “bleach” or “Drano,” according to court documents.
Medical staff poked Pike with at least seven needles before gaining access to a vein, and one needle was “bent in a 90-degree angle” when it was removed, her lawyers said in the filing.
“My arm feels like it’s about to burst open,” she uttered during the lethal procedure at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday.
Pike then asked her all-female execution squad, “does this happen like that?”
Witnesses heard her crying and gasping for air throughout the grueling ordeal, according to her attorneys.
The execution drug, pentobarbital, is a caustic, highly alkaline chemical that burns human flesh, tissue and veins on contact, akin to household chemicals like “bleach” or “Drano,” Pike’s experts say.
When she was rushed to a Nashville hospital, both of her arms were swollen, severely burned and blistered, according to court docs.
Pike is the only person in history to survive a lethal injection after drugs have entered the bloodstream.
She has remained in critical condition since the botched execution and likely suffered permanent brain damage, her attorney Randy Spivey said.
In January 1995, at just 18 years old, Pike brutally murdered her Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer, 19, in a jealous rage, believing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, according to her confession.
Pike, along with her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and friend Shadolla Peterson, 18, lured Slemmer to an isolated stretch of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus to torture and kill her.
Pike finished off Slemmer by smashing her head in with a chunk of asphalt — then kept a piece of the victim’s skull as a sick souvenir. She was sentenced to death in 1996.
Shipp received life in prison due to his minor status, while Peterson got probation for serving as an accessory after testifying against the pair.
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