‘She didn’t die’: Mum of Christa Pike’s victim speaks out after two failed lethal injections

May Martinez, the mother of Christa Pike’s murder victim, Colleen Slemmer, has reacted to the killer surviving two doses of lethal injection.

30 years ago, Christa Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, graphically killed Colleen. She’s been on death row ever since, and though her execution date was September 30, it failed, and she was rushed to the hospital. 

Colleen Slemmer’s mother was present for the execution and said afterwards: “They went to try to execute her, and she didn’t die.”

The mother of Christa’s victim explained that all of the witnesses were asked to leave. They spoke to the commissioner, who informed them of what had happened inside the execution room. 

Credit: Tennessee Department of Correction

“They didn’t say anything, and then, all of a sudden, they asked all the victims to leave. And we left,” she explained to NBC. “We didn’t know anything until we got up to the office and saw the commissioner. And he said that it didn’t work, that it didn’t work, and she’s on her way to the hospital.”

Though she did slam the corrections facility, the state’s governor, and the attorney general, saying they “f**ked up”, May Martinez also noted that Christa showed “no remorse” during what she thought were her final few moments. 

“Not nothing … about what happened, you know, to Colleen,” she added. 

May Martinez spoke about Christa Pike’s execution before

In the week leading up to the execution, May Martinez spoke to WBIR about Christa Pike’s lack of remorse.  

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“I’m very happy because she’ll never kill anyone else. Plus I want Colleen to be at rest without having constant reminders,” she said. “She [Pike] has never reached out to me, and she is not remorseful at all… You see the pictures now, she still has that smile… If she did talk to me, I wouldn’t talk to her or give her the satisfaction.”

Credit: WBIR

Similarly, in 2021, she said: “She did the crime. I think she should pay for it. I would feel better that she felt the same pain that Colleen did.

“My heart breaks every single day because I keep reliving it and reliving it, and I can’t no more, and I want this to happen before I die. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was. I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting.”

At the time of writing, there was no new update on Christa Pike’s condition in the hospital. 

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Featured image credit: WBIR10 and YouTube