Death row inmate survives 2 lethal injections at execution

What would have been the first execution of a woman

in Tennessee in 200 years ends not with convicted murder Christa Gail Pike

dead, but instead rushed for medical treatment after surviving two lethal injections.

“Basically, all I have to say is they went through two rounds,

and she was still breathing at the end. It was very ragged.

She lifted her head up and was looking around at one point.

She said that there was a spot that was burning and hurting

and asked if that was normal. None of it was normal. I covered

all the executions last year and most of the ones this year.

We haven't seen anything like it,” says Catherine Sweeney, a media witness.

Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital at 7:46pm

Wednesday after which she was heard snoring for close to

an hour before the microphone was cut off to the witness room.

She was later taken for medical treatment from the

Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

The state correctional department says they're not able

to provide any information at this time.

This after a dramatic last-hour stay that reversed a

Court of Appeals halt on the execution as

more than 30 people gathered outside the Riverbend Maximum

Security prison earlier to protest the execution.

Now 50, Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 killing of

19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at Knoxville Job Corps.