New Delhi, Oct. 2 -- Christa Pike was scheduled to be executed in Tennessee on Wednesday evening but remained alive after two injections of pentobarbital, breathing, making snoring sounds and only complaining that her arm hurt.

Pike, sentenced to death for torturing and killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, had said she was at peace as the lethal injection began.

Pike, now 50, was 18 when she committed the murder. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Instead, she left prison in an ambulance, not a hearse. Here's what happened during the botched execution and why Pike did not die.

The Associated Press witnessed the failed execution. Pike was already strapped to the gurney, with an IV i...