Christa Pike unconscious and placed on ventilator after two failed execution attempts

Christa Pike was rushed to hospital after two failed execution attempts (Picture: Tennessee Department of Corrections)

Hospital staff have been working to save Christa Pike’s life after two failed attempts to execute her, lawyers have said.

On Wednesday, two doses of lethal injection pentobarbital were administered, but Pike remained alive.

She was taken to a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, where, as of Thursday night, she was placed on a ventilator and was unconscious.

In a court filing today, her attorneys said they believe problems with the IV lines caused the fatal drug to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream.

They wrote: ‘Apparently, at no point did any member of the execution team realise that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms. Pike’s body.’

Rather than ‘remedying this failure’, they said, authorities prepared and administered a backup set of pentobarbital syringes.

Pike was to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years (Picture: Knoxville News Sentinel-USA Today Network)

The execution team spent an hour administering the drugs to no avail, with defence lawyer Randy Spivey saying he counted at least seven needles in her arm.

Pike was audibly snoring, as heard on the chamber’s microphone, and also complained of pain, journalists who witnessed the failed execution reported.

She also kicked her feet repeatedly, knocking off the sheets placed over her.

As both sides of the death penalty case now continue demanding answers, the state’s governor, Bill Lee, has ordered an independent review.

In the meantime, Pike’s execution has been indefinitely postponed, as has another scheduled for later this year.

Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, then aged 19.

The teen’s mother, May Martinez, has called this week’s botched execution ‘a mess’.

Pike was to become the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in 200 years.

Instead, she’s become the first person ever to survive two lethal injections.

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