Newly revealed dispatch audio shows the complete confusion when Tennessee prison officials called for help after Christa Pike survived her botched exє𝔠uti☉n — with one dispatcher assuming it was someone “prank calling.”
Pike — who was sentenced to dєatᩚh for the grisly 1995 murder of a college classmate — survived two doses of the lєthaℓ inje𝔠ti☉n drug pentobarbital on Sept. 30, the first dєatᩚh row inmate ever to do so.
The first 911 call came in around p.m., roughly an hour after she received her first dose.

The caller claims that Pike, 50, was given “10 grams of pentobarbital” as part of an exє𝔠uti☉n but requested an ambulance because “the person is not yet deceased.”
911 callers phoned for medical assistance after Christa Pike’s botched exє𝔠uti☉n, but first responders thought they were being pranked at first.

Tennessee Department of Correction/AFP via Getty Images
Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on Wednesday, September 30, 2026.

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The caller was unable to provide a verification code to confirm it was genuine, and the dispatcher eventually called the Tennessee Department of Correction Central Control at p.m. to verify.

“We are trying to find out if that is an actual thing that is happening and we need to send an ambulance” or “if this is someone that is basically prank-calling or like swatting us,” she said.
As she struggled to get proper confirmation from officials, the dispatcher reveals around p.m. that she “has been informed it is a false call” and “there is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison,” according to the recording.
Minutes later, however, a responder reported that someone at the prison gate was insisting the emergency was real.
“Somebody is outside the gate at the prison telling us that it’s real and demanding us to go in.

They say they are some sort of state official.

I need somebody to get out to the gate and talk to those people,” the responder said on the call.

Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after the exє𝔠uti☉n of Christa Pike was halted on Oct. 1, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn.

AP Photo/George Walker IV
Prison officials didn’t confirm the call for help was legitimate until p.m., the call logs show.
Pike was strapped to a gurney in the dєatᩚh chamber for about an hour as medical staff jabbed her with at least seven needles, one of which bent a full 90-degrees when it came out of her arm, her attorney Randy Spivey said.
An inje𝔠ti☉n gurney and electric chair sit in the dєatᩚh chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn.

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Witnesses were rushed out of the viewing room after reporting hearing loud snores from behind a curtain.

Pike was rushed to the hospital unconscious with her lawyers fearing she was brain dead — but she miraculously woke up six days later.
Pike was discharged from the hospital on Saturday and sent back to prison where she’s continuing to receive medical care, according to her lawyers.