US inmate Christa Pike says she woke up ‘confused, in pain’ after failed execution

US death row inmate Christa Pike has mad  known her first public statement since her botched execution in September.

“There hasn’t been a moment since that night when I haven’t been in pain,” she said in a statement released by her legal team on social media on Friday.

“My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn’t just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul.”

Pike, 50, was discharged from hospital at the end of last month after surviving two lethal injections of the drug pentobarbital, which left her in a critical condition.fc

She has since been sent back to the prison where she has spent the last 30 years for murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995.

Pike is thought to be the only person to have survived an execution attempt by lethal injection.

Her lawyers previously said she had suffered from pneumonia following the attempted execution, had significant swelling on her arms and was also unable to swallow.

“I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger,” she said in her statement on Friday. “But healing is not the same as being okay.”

Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for low-income young people.

Pike’s botched execution captivated and shocked the world last month and shocked Pike, too.

“I had not contemplated life beyond that night,” Pike said in her statement.

“I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position.”

The Tennessee Department of Correction is yet to say why the execution did not go as planned, though it has defended the method it used.

It declined comment on Pike’s statement when contacted by the BBC.