NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee officials failed to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday after giving her two doses of a lethal drug for a 1995 murder. A death-penalty expert called the breakdown unprecedented, prompting Gov. Bill Lee to suspend the state’s remaining execution for the rest of the year.

Pike, 50, was still alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection, according to her attorneys. She was transported by ambulance from the prison to a hospital, though her lawyers said they had not been informed of her condition.

Her execution had been set for 10 a.m. Wednesday for a killing committed when she was 18. Pike would have become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries. An appeals court issued a stay about an hour before the scheduled procedure, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it several hours later.

Pike received two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings submitted late Wednesday.

Lee said he had ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.” He also announced that Tennessee’s other scheduled execution would not be carried out this year.

“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” the governor said.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said it had “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”

Under Tennessee’s protocol, a second set of syringes is administered if an inmate remains alive after the first set of drugs. The rules do not specify what officials should do if the person survives the second round.

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, described Pike’s experience as “singular and unparalleled.”

Seven other people have survived execution attempts after problems prevented medical teams from accessing a vein, Maher said. However, she added, no one had previously remained alive after receiving the drugs typically used in lethal injections.

Media witnesses detail the execution process

Witnesses watching from a separate media room said officials opened the curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., revealing Pike strapped to a gurney.

In what were presented as her final words, Pike said, “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love.” She also said she was at peace.

Pike did not lose consciousness. At one point, she lifted her head and asked prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel the way it did. Witnesses could not determine what sensation she was describing.

By 8:26 p.m., witnesses said officials had administered the second pentobarbital dose.

Pike’s attorneys filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court late Wednesday, asking for an immediate halt to the execution. They argued that she was experiencing “unnecessary agony” and that the procedure violated her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. Separate motions were also filed in the Sixth Circuit Court and a federal district court.

The failed attempt marked the second time this year Tennessee has been unable to complete an execution. In May, officials abandoned the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after execution workers spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to establish an IV for the pentobarbital.

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 stabbing and beating death of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville job-training facility. The case drew national attention partly because a pentagram had been carved into Slemmer’s body. Other details fueled fears of Satanic worship during the “satanic panic” that spread across the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.

Stay of execution was swiftly appealed

Pike’s execution was originally scheduled for the morning, and witnesses had assembled at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution when a divided 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel voted 2-1 to issue a stay. The court said it needed time to examine whether allegations of childhood sexual abuse had been adequately considered during Pike’s sentencing.

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The Tennessee attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that a last-minute delay would traumatize Slemmer’s family and reward what it called “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s lawyers.

Later Wednesday, the Supreme Court authorized Tennessee to proceed. The conservative majority gave no explanation for its decision, while the court’s three liberal justices signed a dissent saying Pike’s claims warranted further review.

Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.

Case renewed debate on the death penalty for teens

As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.

After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a statement.

Victim’s mother says she is waiting for death sentence

Slemmer’s mother had traveled to Nashville in the hopes of witnessing the execution of her daughter’s killer. She told The Associated Press on Saturday that she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Martinez could not be immediately reached by telephone for comment after the execution was halted.

The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.

Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Executions of women are rare in the US

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.

Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.

A medevac helicopter crashed into the waters off California’s Catalina Island on Wednesday night, leaving one of the five people aboard missing and sending the other four to hospitals, officials said.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department received the first reports of the crash shortly before 8 p.m.

Authorities quickly launched a search-and-rescue operation, with fire department helicopters and divers dispatched to the scene. The effort remained underway late Wednesday night.

The U.S. Coast Guard also joined the response.

“I have been informed that a medevac helicopter leaving Catalina Island has crashed shortly after takeoff. L.A. County Fire, Sheriff, Coast Guard, and Avalon Fire are on the scene,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said on X. “Search and rescue operations are underway, and I am praying for everyone who was on board.”

At least one of the five people on the helicopter was still unaccounted for late Wednesday, according to KTLA. Two people were taken to hospitals in stable condition, while the conditions of the other two were not immediately known.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said two of the survivors were transported to a hospital on Catalina Island. The other two were taken to Ronald Reagan Medical Center at UCLA.

The helicopter’s flight plan was not immediately clear, the fire department said, according to CBS LA. Deputies identified the aircraft’s operator as Reach Air Medical Services.

Flight-tracking data indicated that a Reach Air Medical Services helicopter left Oceanside in San Diego County at 6:40 p.m. and arrived on Catalina Island at 7:04 p.m.

Reach Air Medical Services confirmed it was aware of the incident but said it could not provide additional details.

“Our immediate concern is for the well-being of those involved,” a Reach spokesperson said in a statement to CBS LA.

A Cornell University alumna told investigators she was “100 percent” certain that seven fraternity members had gang-raped her in the weeks after the alleged assault.

The woman, identified in court documents only as Jane Doe, spoke with Cornell campus police on November 14—more than three weeks after the alleged attack at the university’s Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024.

According to a transcript obtained by CBS New York, Jane Doe told a campus police investigator that she had been drinking and taking drugs on the night in question. She also said parts of her memory were missing.

Even so, she said she could distinguish between the sexual activity that initially took place and what she alleged happened later that night.

Asked whether she had consented to the initial encounter, Jane Doe replied: “Yeah, as much as I can be, because again, I was super drunk when I got there… But I was pretty OK with all of this.”

“And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time,” she added.

She said she could not remember the end of the night, “where I was raped,” and did not know precisely how many men had sex with her.

However, when describing the alleged assault, Jane Doe told police: “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.”

The transcript indicates that the campus police investigator questioned Jane Doe throughout the interview while she worked on a written account of the alleged incident.

Before asking what she had said when the men sought sex, the investigator warned that his questions might sound accusatory. He explained that he needed detailed answers to determine which charges could potentially be filed.

Jane Doe said she swatted away one man’s hand and told him she was uncomfortable. She also said she told another man “no” several times—or said she was too tired to have intercourse.

“Was it ‘no’ or was it ‘eh, I’m tired?’” the investigator asked.

“I think it’s ‘I’m tired,’” Jane Doe replied.

Later, the investigator asked whether she had become exhausted by the men’s questions and eventually yielded to them.

“Yes. It was coercion, yes,” she said, according to the transcript. She added that she had been “completely and totally incapacitated.”

The investigator documented her account, read it back to her and asked whether anything needed to be clarified or corrected, the CBS News report said.

On the second day of the interview, Jane Doe reviewed the revised six-page statement.

When she was preparing to sign it, the transcript shows her saying: “I’m very confident about this.”

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has said his decision not to bring charges against the seven alleged perpetrators was based on the contents of the signed 2024 statement. 

‘She never says that she was drugged without her knowledge,’ he previously told ABC News. ‘She admits to taking drugs and alcohol voluntarily and with knowledge.’

‘She does not allege that she was forced to engage in any acts. She does not say that she was physically helpless or unconscious or incapacitated at any point during the time at the fraternity house.’

But he told CBS News on Tuesday he had never before seen the transcript showing what Jane Doe told campus police.

‘I’m going to follow up on this because this is news to me,’ he said. 

When he was then told that Jane Doe said she was confident she was raped, Van Houten replied: ‘That wasn’t information that I had, first of all. Second of all, that is a legal conclusion.

‘If she had said those words, we certainly would want to have explored that more,’ he noted. ‘Like I said, that wasn’t provided to me.’

The District Attorney said he will now seek a copy of the transcript and follow up with Cornell police.

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‘Nobody knows this information about the transcript and that gives me something to really dig into because that changes the landscape for me.’

Cornell officials have since said its police department provided the results of the school’s investigation to the District Attorney’s Office as prosecutors reconsider whether to bring charges against the alleged rapists.

The District Attorney’s decision to reopen the case came after Jane Doe filed a civil suit on September 16.

It alleges that Doe, then 20, arrived at the fraternity house on October 19, 2024, already heavily intoxicated following a night of drinking in Ithaca.

She alleges she was pressured to take ketamine and given marijuana and high-proof alcohol before being repeatedly sexually assaulted as additional fraternity members entered the room.

The complaint alleges seven men eventually participated and that Doe became ‘completely incapacitated.’ She says the ordeal continued until around 5.45am, when she lost consciousness.

It also claims that during the assault, one fraternity member posted to a ‘Chi Phi Actives’ Snapchat group that there was ‘free p***y’ upstairs, referring to Doe. 

‘Like you can walk in and whip it out,’ another member allegedly responded, according to a screenshot described in the filing. 

Doe reported the allegations to Cornell University Police on November 8 after friends encouraged her to come forward, according to the lawsuit.

Cornell temporarily suspended the fraternity and seven students that day.

The university has since agreed to undertake an independent investigation into its handling of the matter, Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday.

She said in a post on social media that University President Michael Kotlikoff agreed to hire outside counsel to conduct the probe.

‘I want answers,’ the governor said. ‘I want to know what happened.’

University officials have previously said federal privacy laws prevent Cornell from revealing individual disciplinary outcomes.

But it noted that the Xi chapter of Chi Phi remains barred from campus.

The defendants have not all publicly responded to the allegations, but at least two have denied wrongdoing.

Jeremy Saland, an attorney for defendant Scott Kretzschmar, said the alleged incident ‘did not happen.’

‘At bottom, Scott never sexually assaulted or even touched the plaintiff in any way. Period,’ Saland said.

‘We look forward to confronting the plaintiff in a court of law for her selfishly false claims with both the evidence and her own words.’

Defendant Scott Norris separately denied participating in sexual activity or drug use, while acknowledging sending one message cited in the complaint.

‘I did not participate in any sexual activity or drug use,’ Norris said. ‘I thoughtlessly engaged in Snapchat and briefly stopped in the room where misconduct happened but not when it happened.’

For Doe, her attorney says the consequences have stretched far beyond the night at the center of the lawsuit.

He has claimed his client continues to suffer from anxiety, depression and sleepless nights and stopped attending Cornell following the alleged attack.

‘She is basically stalled, and her life is devoted to dealing with the trauma,’ Giuffra previously told the Daily Mail. ‘It’s like a constant, constant reminder.’

‘You could give her all the money in the world; nobody wants to have this as their story. Nobody wants to have this in their lives.’

A University of Georgia student allegedly disguised himself as a high school cross-country runner before ambushing an athlete and attacking him with rocks during a race.

Aiden Dombrowski is accused of carrying out the assault after infiltrating the Coweta Cup Cross Country Championship at Newnan High School on Saturday, according to Newnan police.

Dombrowski, 19, reportedly drove about 110 miles from the University of Georgia campus in Athens to Newnan, Georgia, on Friday night. He allegedly slept in his car while waiting for the meet to begin.

The following morning, Dombrowski allegedly put on an East Coweta High School cross-country uniform and moved through the woods. Investigators say he waited there until a Newnan High School runner passed by.

Witnesses told police they saw Dombrowski holding rocks, but said he ultimately pushed the runner and struck him with his fists.

Witnesses compared the bizarre attack to a scene from a Netflix movie, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.

The unidentified runner fought back, eventually forcing Dombrowski away from the course and into the surrounding woods.

As he fled, Dombrowski allegedly changed clothes and discarded the school uniform in his car. He later surrendered to police, who had been searching for him.

When Dombrowski turned himself in, he appeared to be wearing a tracksuit from another school.

In a conversation with officers, Dombrowski claimed the incident was a prank and denied attacking the runner, whom he described as an “acquaintance.”

He provided no further explanation.

“So you don’t know that kid at all,” one officer asked Dombrowski, according to body-camera footage of the arrest obtained by the outlet.

“I know him, I’m not friends with him,” Dombrowski replied. “No bad blood. Acquaintances.”

Dombrowski was arrested and charged with battery.

He was booked into the Coweta County Jail.

His mugshot showed Dombrowski with blood on his face and a gash near his right eye, an injury he allegedly suffered during the confrontation.

Police later said Dombrowski had never attended East Coweta High School. He also reportedly did not explain how he obtained the school’s uniform.

Before attending UGA, Dombrowski studied at nearby Northgate High School. According to his NCSA College Recruiting profile, he hoped to break 15 minutes in the 5K before graduating and aimed to “improve considerably” in college.

Dombrowski does not appear on the University of Georgia’s cross-country or track team rosters.