BREAKING: Christa Pika SURVIVES Two Lethal Injections, Emergency Crews Arrive To Tennessee Prison

UPDATE: Tennessee officials say Christa Pike’s execution went "very ragged, very poorly."

Her attorney said a bit ago that Pike "has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring." pic.twitter.com/mXBwcygLMa

— AZ Intel (@AZ_Intel_) October 1, 2026

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Attorneys for Christa Pike filed an emergency motion to halt and stay Pike’s execution. They say she was administered two syringes of pentobarbital but was alive.

“Ms. Pike has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring,” they wrote.

They filed the motion in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

A member of the media from WBIR in Knoxville who witnessed parts of the execution said he did not know Pike’s status.

When the media witnesses left the building, he said he thought she was alive.

“We have a lot of questions,” he said during a news release. “And the (Tennessee Department of Correction) has a lot of answers it needs to provide the public.”

He said he heard Pike’s breathing become labored.

Tori Gessner, a journalist at WKRN who has witnessed several executions, said, “Nothing about today was normal, typical, at all.”

Gessner said she heard Pike say, “My arm feels like it’s about to burst open.”

Just as media witnesses exited the prison, emergency vehicles pulled up outside the prison.

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BREAKING: Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is still alive after two lethal injections, her lawyer says in a motion to again halt the execution. https://t.co/g6Oh7eW2YA

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 1, 2026

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Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death for a 1995 murder Wednesday, media witnesses said, after the lethal injection was halted for hours as courts considered a last-minute appeal of what would have been the state’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.

Pike, 50, had been scheduled for execution for a killing she committed at age 18 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an appeals court ruling that stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start.

Officials appeared to give Pike two doses of pentobarbital.

At 7:46 p.m. prison officials closed the curtain to the media room. They raised the curtain three minutes later. Pike could be heard loudly snoring, and the curtain was closed again at 8:06 pm.

Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at about 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.

Tennessee Department of Correction spokesman Dorinda Carter told media witnesses she was unable to immediately provide information about what happened.

Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit court and district court.

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