Christa Pike Released From Hospital After Surviving Botched Execution, Returned to Prison

Christa Pike, the death row inmate who survived two doses of a lethal injection drug meant to execute her on September 30, has been released from the hospital. The 50-year-old is now back in the Nashville-area prison where she was previously housed for decades.

“Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center where she has been housed for more than 30 years,” her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, Luke Ihnen, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, said in a statement provided to CBS News on Saturday. “She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances. She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery.”

Pike was sentenced to death for the brutal killing of her classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995, when Pike was 18 years old. After the botched execution, Pike remained unconscious for days. Her lawyers told CBS News that they were told she was brain dead, and were preparing to remove her from life support before she woke up on Tuesday, October 6.

“Where am I?” and “Who are you?” were reportedly her first words. Now, her lawyers say she is able to walk “with some assistance” and “has started to eat a regular diet.”

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Pike is the only person to have survived a lethal injection.