Tennessee Department of Corrections Director Frank Strada resigned Saturday, days after killer Krista Pike remained alive in the hospital after surviving two lethal injections.
Gov. Bill Lee (R) announced Strada’s resignation and called for a comprehensive independent review to determine what led to Pike’s lethal injection going wrong. new york post the report said.
Strada said it was a “tremendous honor” to serve in the role and remains confident that “the department performed its duties according to established protocols.” He added, “Even so, as the independent review moves forward, it is in the best interest of the people of Tennessee to withdraw. I believe this review is entirely appropriate and necessary, and I look forward to doing whatever I can to help determine what exactly happened.”
Lee also postponed the state’s only remaining execution this year, Breitbart News reported.
Meanwhile, the 50-year-old killer survived two fatal doses of pentobarbital on Wednesday and was taken to hospital alive but unconscious and on a respirator.
“Pike will be the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years because she was sentenced to death for the jealous murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer when she was 18,” postal The article has been read.
Pike’s attorney said she had requested an all-female lethal injection team, a request that was approved before problems with the injection arose.
Former Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith told Fox News he is still haunted by the crime that occurred three decades ago, saying of Pike: “She represents pure evil.”
The outlet detailed the gruesome crime:
Led by 18-year-old Christa Pike, three classmates from a vocational school for troubled youth at the Knoxville Job Corps Center lured Slimer to his death by claiming they were going to a music store to buy marijuana that had been hidden in the park.
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Keith said they tortured Slemmer for nearly an hour, beating, cutting and gagging her before pressing her skull to the ground with a piece of broken asphalt.
They held her down as she tried to escape. They slashed her with razor blades as she begged for her life. When she cried, they gagged her with a hair tie. Pike, who was 18 at the time and is now 50, kept a fragment of Slimer’s skull as a trophy and showed it off to classmates before being arrested. Her then-boyfriend, who was also convicted but did not face the death penalty because he was only 17, carved five-pointed stars into her breasts and face.
“This situation is tragic. Krista Pike should have been executed long ago. Now this botched process is magnifying the pain of Colleen Slemmer’s family,” Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn wrote in a social media post on Thursday.
“While there should be a thorough review of what happened and why the process failed, the answer is simple: bring back the electric chair and bring swift justice to these victims. As your governor, I will do just that,” she concluded.