A reporter who witnessed the botched execution of murderer Christa Pike revealed the moment witnesses knew something was going wrong.

Death row inmate Pike, 50, was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee for over 200 years Wednesday, but was instead rushed to hospital after two bungled attempts to end her life.

“As we’re sitting in this room, and it’s now taking nearly an hour for them to open the curtain from the time that we’re sat, one of my colleagues in there, who had seen her fair share of executions, who was kind enough to kind of walk me through the process, leaned over and said, ‘It should not be taking this long for the curtains to open. Something’s going wrong,’” Will Puckett, one of just seven media witnesses at the execution, told The US Sun.

Here’s the latest on the botched execution of Tennessee murderer Christa Pike:

Puckett said the experience was “surreal” and admitted that he had been left “at a loss for words” during the botched execution at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Pike’s lawyers revealed Thursday that she was in hospital in critical condition and receiving lifesaving care.

Her attorney Randy Spivey said that she had been strapped to the table for an hour while medical staff jabbed her with at least seven needles – one of which was bent when it came out of her arm.