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Christa Pike declined to select a special last meal before Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, instead asking that the money be used to feed people experiencing homelessness.
Pike, 50, asked that the $20 allotted for her final meal be used to purchase pizza for homeless people in downtown Nashville, the The New York Times reported.
A group of Pike’s supporters subsequently raised money to honor her wish, according to an Instagram post shared by her legal team’s “Mercy for Christa” page and Open Table Nashville, an organization that ᴀssists people experiencing homelessness.
More than 85 people received warm meals, including pizza, coffee, pastries and breakfast sandwiches, according to the post.
The post also described Pike’s own experience with homelessness, saying she suffered abuse during childhood and was unhoused as a teenager.
“But even as the State of Tennessee was preparing to execute her, Christa was thinking of others,” the post read.
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Pike’s supporters encouraged others to honor her wishes by purchasing additional meals.
The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) previously confirmed that Pike declined to select a last meal, according to WVLT and WKRN, which reported the decision on Sept. 29.
However, Pike did not stop eating or drinking ahead of her execution attempt, despite rumors circulating that she did so purposely to become dehydrated. The suggestion is she did this because the less hydrated a person is, the more difficult it can be to locate and inject a substance into their veins, PEOPLE previously reported.
According to her attorneys and TDOC officials, Pike ate food and drank “plenty of fluids, including Gatorade,” before the procedure. She also ate from a tray of food brought to her by the warden at Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution, they said.
Pike survived the attempt to execute her by lethal injection on Sept. 30 after receiving two rounds of the drug pentobarbital. She was hospitalized in critical condition but has since regained consciousness and has started walking short distances around her hospital room, according to her attorney Stephen Ferrell.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student in Job Corps, a federal occupational training program for troubled teens and young adults. She was 18 at the time of the killing.
She remains the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.