Calls show how confusion delayed emergency response for death row inmate Christa Pike

• Confusion over a 911 call delayed help by about 30 minutes during Christa Pike’s botched execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Tennessee.
• Dispatchers and prison staff struggled to confirm the call was real, and officials first said it was false before later confirming an ambulance was needed.
• The case has renewed criticism of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, after Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital and her lawyers said she was still breathing and needed urgent care.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee – The emergency response to Christa Pike’s botched execution in September was delayed by about half an hour, because of confusion over the authenticity of the 911 call, according to dispatch and radio calls released on Oct 12.

The first 911 call for an ambulance was made by someone inside the US’ Riverbend Maximum Security Institution at 8.40pm local time on Sept 30, about an hour after the lethal injections there began, according to a redacted transcript of the phone call.

But confirming the legitimacy of that call took several minutes of back and forth between Nashville emergency services and officials at the prison, according to audio from eight other calls and radio traffic, which was released as part of a public records request by several news organisations, including The New York Times.

The confusion seemed widespread.

The initial 911 call did not come, as it might normally, from central control at the Tennessee Department of Correction, and the caller did not have the right security verification.

In response, dispatch workers repeatedly tried to verify the call by reaching out to prison staff and other officials at the prison during the execution.

“We are trying to find out if that is an actual thing that is happening and we need to send an ambulance,” one caller said. Or, she added, “if this is someone that is just basically prank-calling”.

It appeared from the phone calls that the Department of Correction’s central control was not immediately aware of the request for help.

One person at central control, who was not identified, told Nashville emergency services that the department “would have been the one to call you guys – we didn’t call anyone”.

In another call, at 9.03pm, someone told responders that supervisors have said “it is a false call” and that “there is no medical assistance needed”.

But at 9.07pm, an emergency responder said as part of radio traffic that “some sort of state official” is “outside the gate at the prison telling us that it’s real and demanding us to go in”.

Minutes later, they got word that prison officials had formally confirmed by phone that the request was legitimate.

The Tennessee Department of Correction did not immediately respond to a request for a comment about the apparent breakdown in communication.

Previously, the agency said that every step of the protocol had been followed and the process did “not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out”.

Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol has come under renewed scrutiny after the failed attempt to carry out the execution of Pike, 50, who had been on death row for the torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate in Knoxville.

Lawyers for Pike, the first person to survive receiving two doses of the drug pentobarbital during an execution, said on Oct 10 that she had been discharged from a Nashville hospital and returned to prison.

The confusion captured on the calls appear to emphasise how the execution protocol, criticised by state defence lawyers and lawmakers in both parties for its vagueness, does not appear to account for problems during an execution.

Tennessee has had two botched executions in 2026, including Pike’s.

The protocol really did not consider that the execution may not succeed, said Joel Zivot, an anaesthesiologist and intensive care physician who consulted for Pike’s defence team before the failed execution.

Prison officials, he added, “had no idea that it could fail”.

Zivot was among the medical experts who warned that Pike’s underlying medical conditions, including small veins, could complicate the execution. Those warnings were ignored, her lawyers said.

“Considering, of course, what everyone said to them – that it could fail – they certainly did not seem to react,” Zivot said.

It was not clear from the recordings whether oxygen and other resuscitative gear were on hand in the execution chamber, or if Pike received medical care before an ambulance arrived more than an hour after the drugs were injected.

The transcript of the initial 911 call and some of the audio recordings were redacted, in part because Tennessee law prohibits the identification of anyone connected with execution procedures.

But the person who made the initial 911 call appeared unfamiliar with the steps needed to verify the legitimacy of an emergency call from the prison, leading to the effort to authenticate the call.

“Is nobody there that knows the process?” someone asked on a call between the Nashville Fire Department and emergency services.

“I have no idea,” someone else responded. “I guess because this is a special case, they may not know.”

The calls also showed that Kelly Gleason, one of Pike’s lawyers, called 911 at 9.08pm, after a colleague who had witnessed the botched injections told her that Pike was still breathing.

“She is still alive and breathing and needs immediate life-saving care,” Gleason said on her call for help. The ambulance drove through the gates a few minutes later. NYTIMES

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.