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Song Christa Pike was heard singing from inside execution chamber before surviving execution attempt
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Further details have been revealed about the failed execution attempt of Christa Pike by witnesses who were in attendance.
As previously reported, Pike, who was set to become the first woman in over 200 years to be executed in Tennessee, reportedly survived two botched lethal injection attempts.
Her execution had initially been set for 10AM on September 30, but she was granted a last-minute temporary stay just an hour before it was set to begin.
Hours later, the Supreme Court stepped in and ruled that the killing could go ahead, with the process beginning at 7.27PM instead, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
According to witnesses, per FOX 5, the curtains to the execution chamber opened at 7.27PM, where Pike was seen strapped to a gurney with an IV line in her arm, through which she was given the lethal injection containing pentobarbitol.
Pike then delivered her final statement, saying: "I just want to say that I'm going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is with love.
"I'm at peace, and I'm ready to go," before singing 'I Love You So Much' with a male spiritual advisor, who patted her head.
At 7.34PM, Pike complained about a pain in her arm at the IV site, saying: "The vein in my arm feels like it's about to bust."
Witnesses say Pike was still moving around before letting out a large yawn at 7.45PM, after which the curtains were closed before being opened again just minutes later as Pike began to snore loudly.
She was given two doses of pentobarbitol after the first failed to work, before the curtain was once again closed at 8.05PM, with witnesses reporting to hear her snoring consistently within the chamber.
At 8:53PM,, the warden cut the microphone and asked witnesses to leave the area.
According to her attorneys, Pike is now being treated in a hospital, although they said that they do not know her condition.
A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Corrections then said that she was ’transported to an off-site medical facility’.
In a federal filing seeking to stop her execution, lawyers for the now 50-year-old Pike said that the executioners administered ‘both syringes of lethal injection chemicals’, but that Pike remained alive.
According to those lawyers, Pike ‘has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat.’
The Repubican Governor Bill Lee has ordered a ‘comprehensive third-party review’ into the events, and has said that the state’s last planned execution for the year will not take place.
Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion to the U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday to seek lifesaving measures, arguing that she was in unnecessary agony, violating her right against cruel and unusual punishment.
Her attorneys added: "Failure to provide such care constitutes deliberate indifference to legitimate, serious medical needs."
Pike has been on death row for over 30 years, following a murder she committed at the age of 18.
The then-teenager had become jealous after believing Colleen Slemmer, a friend from the Job Corps, was interested in her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp.
The pair, along with their friend Shadolla Peterson, who acted as a lookout, lured 19-year-old Slemmer to a secluded location where they beat and tortured her, before ending her life.
Slemmer's body was later found by a member of the public who initially mistook it for the corpse of an animal, as she had been so badly beaten.
Pike had smashed Slemmer's skull with a piece of asphalt, and had reported kept a portion of it and showed it off around the school.
She confessed to the murder, but later said: "I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime."
Pike had filed several pleas for clemency, with her attorneys arguing that the jury never considered facts about her being severely sexually abused since she was a toddler.
As it stands, the execution warrant for Pike expired at midnight local time, and the state has yet to announce whether it will pursue another execution, and when that will be.