Eerie song Christa Pike was heard singing inside execution chamber before surviving two lethal injections

She then reportedly asked:

“Does it happen like that?”

When her spiritual adviser encouraged her to relax, Pike reportedly smiled and responded:

“I’m trying.”

Witnesses described a tear rolling down her face.

Her breathing then became increasingly noticeable.

Journalists present said Pike took several deep breaths, at times moving her upper body on the gurney.

She reportedly lifted her head and looked toward her arm, while movement from her feet was strong enough to disturb the sheet covering her.

The curtain was eventually lowered.

When it reopened, Pike was still alive.

Witnesses continued reporting heavy breathing, gasping, snoring sounds and movement.

At one point, they described what appeared to be a large yawn.

The curtain was then closed again.

This time, it remained shut.

Although witnesses could no longer see Pike, they said they could still hear what sounded like loud snoring coming from the chamber.

That became one of the most troubling aspects of the failed execution for reporters who were present.

They could hear signs that Pike remained alive, but because the curtain was closed, they could not see what prison officials were doing.

At approximately 8:53 p.m., the microphone was turned off and witnesses were instructed to leave.

By then, Tennessee officials had administered both rounds of pentobarbital permitted under the state’s execution protocol.

Pike was still alive.

An ambulance later transported her away from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

Her attorneys said she was taken to a nearby hospital and required what they described as “life-saving measures.”

Subsequent reporting said Pike was in critical condition following the failed execution.

For Colleen Slemmer’s family, who had traveled to witness the execution, what unfolded inside Riverbend was deeply upsetting.

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, described the confusion that followed when officials unexpectedly instructed witnesses to leave.

“They went to try to execute her, and she didn’t die.”

She continued:

“They didn’t say anything, and then, all of a sudden, they asked all the victims to leave.”

Martinez and her husband described the failed procedure simply:

“It was a mess.”

The family had waited more than three decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

Instead, they left the prison without the execution being completed and with Pike being transported to a hospital.

Yet only hours earlier, the atmosphere inside the death chamber had reportedly been very different.

Before the breathing difficulties, movement, closed curtain and emergency medical response, Pike had appeared composed while speaking and singing with her spiritual adviser.

According to accounts of those final moments before the drugs were administered, Pike and Noechel sang together.

The words heard from the chamber were simple:

“I love you.”

Pike had also spoken of being at peace before the execution began.

What she apparently expected to be her final moments instead became one of the most unusual failed executions in modern American history.

Tennessee’s protocol allowed officials to administer a second dose if the first failed to cause death.

Officials did so.

But the protocol did not authorize them to continue administering additional doses after that second attempt failed, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.

The state ultimately stopped the procedure and sent Pike for medical treatment.

The fallout was immediate.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee suspended the state’s remaining execution for 2026 and ordered an independent investigation into what happened.

Pike’s attorneys argued that concerns they had previously raised about difficult vein access, the execution drug and the lack of adequate contingency planning had materialized during the procedure.

The Tennessee Department of Correction, meanwhile, maintained that officials followed the state’s established execution protocol.

Now investigators must determine why two doses of pentobarbital failed to kill Pike and what happened during the long periods when witnesses could hear her but could no longer see inside the chamber.

For Slemmer’s family, the failed execution added another painful chapter to a case that has followed them for more than 30 years.

And for Pike, the final moments she apparently expected to spend singing beside her spiritual adviser ended not in death, but in an ambulance ride to a hospital and an entirely new legal and medical battle.