Christa Pike, the Tennessee death row inmate who survived two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital last week, is “up and walking,” according to one of her lawyers.
“What’s been described to me is that physically there’s quite a bit going on, that her arms are very injured and she’s not able to use them very much,” attorney Stephen Ferrell told BBC Radio 4 early Thursday. “She is up and walking for the first time today, but just around the room, not very far.”
He went on to say it remains unclear whether she suffered “permanent damage” and that her head is “somewhat foggy.”
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“She can lose her train of thought really easily and forgets where she’s going,” he said.
Neither Ferrell nor a spokesperson for Pike’s legal team responded to requests for comment Thursday morning.
Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist who advises Pike’s legal team, told Fox News Thursday that he believes she’s still in the intensive care unit.
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Randy Spivey, another attorney for Pike, said outside a Nashville courthouse Wednesday that her legal team did not expect her to wake up, believing she was “brain dead” Monday evening.
“To the shock of everyone, including me, including her team and including the medical team, Christa woke up and began talking,” he said. “I do not have an explanation for what happened between Monday night and Tuesday morning, but what we do know is that Christa has a long road to recovery.”
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Her first words upon waking were “Where am I?” and “Who are you?” he added, explaining that the ordeal left her “angry and confused.”
Pike is believed to be the first person in modern history to survive an attempted lethal injection, according to her attorneys and experts on the death penalty.
She has pneumonia, cannot swallow and has a blood clot in one arm, Spivey said. He described her hands as looking “like if you were to blow up a surgical glove” and said he wasn’t sure if she’ll ever be able to use them again.
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Davidson County Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles granted Pike’s emergency motion to preserve evidence from the failed execution Wednesday.
She ordered the Tennessee Department of Correction to retain physical evidence, including needles, IV lines, package labels and drugs, as well as text messages, encrypted communications, photographs and recordings. She specifically said messages on apps like Signal need to be preserved.
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Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. Two others involved in the slaying received lesser sentences — one who was 17 at the time and another who testified on behalf of the state as part of a plea deal.
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They were all students at Knoxville’s Job Corps Center, a vocational school for youths from troubled backgrounds.
Slemmer was studying computers, an emerging field at the time, then-Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith told Fox News Digital previously.
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“She was a bright young woman,” he said. “She had interest in computers. She was applying herself there. She was clearly an innocent party in this.”
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After slashing her dozens of times, Pike and her accomplices crushed Slemmer’s skull with a chunk of asphalt. Tadaryl Shipp, who is serving a life sentence and is due for his next parole hearing in 2031, carved pentagrams into her chest and face.
A groundskeeper who later discovered the gruesome crime scene initially thought he’d stumbled upon an animal carcass, before he saw Slemmer’s clothes through the blood, according to court records.
What happens next for Pike remains unclear. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has halted executions for the rest of the year.
