Coffin break

When a Tennessee woman was sentenced to death in 1996 for murdering a 19-year-old student the year before, she remained alive for another 30 years.

When the execution of Christa Pike finally happened at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville on 30 September, the first dose of a lethal injection did not kill her.

A second dose of pentobarbital injected into her also did not put her to sleep. As of this writing, Pike, now 50, is critically ill in a hospital where the authorities took her, ironically, to revive her, the BBC reported.

Pike’s lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, told CNN that doctors were still trying to clear two doses of pentobarbital from her body.

Meanwhile, a 70-year-old woman in Hebei province, China, “died” on 8 September.

Suffering from cancer that was no longer treatable, the septuagenarian was brought home from the hospital for end-of-life care.

When she died, relatives placed her body in a refrigerated coffin to preserve it while awaiting the arrival of family members from out of town, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

The following evening, however, her daughter-in-law heard faint “humming” sounds coming from inside the coffin.

Realizing that the elderly woman was still alive, the family promptly took her out of the coffin.

When relatives arrived on 11 September, the woman had regained consciousness and could open her eyes, although she remained in critical condition and was unable to eat or drink, according to SCMP.

That night, the old woman died, and she was buried two days later.

According to doctors, the woman was mistaken for dead on 8 September because she was in a state of extremely low physiological activity, which made her vital signs exceedingly difficult to detect, SCMP reported.