Woman Dies "Holding Wee for a Wii"
A woman apparently died after participating in a contest for KDND 107.9 radio. The contest, call "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" awarded the game console to the person who could drink the most water without going to the bathroom.
According to a news report posted on YouTube, the woman's body was brought to the coroner after the contest though "there is at this point no indication that there is a link".
4 Comments:
There's a link now. The autopsy proved it. That woman died because the huge amount of water in her system caused a fatal brain injury ---hence her complaint of a "terrible headache" afterwards.
Funny how guys joining the army are taught during basic training that if they drink too much water, they'll die an excruciatingly painful death...and how a frat boy died doing a pledge week stunt that was identical to this one, only a couple of years ago, and not far from where that radio station is located...and how a simple search on Google will tell you that too much water will kill you...and how in spite of all this, the station didn't know how dangerous it is to drink excessive amounts of water.
If they'd tried to get qualified medical staff to supervise the contest, the medical staff would have told them how dangerous it was. But since the station was too stupid to do this, the contestants weren't warned of the risk of death. That means that whatever waivers those contestants signed wouldn't stand up in a courtroom, because the contestants were unable to give INFORMED consent. If they weren't informed that the stunt could kill them, then they couldn't agree to assume all responsibility for anything that might happen to them while participating in the contest.
So although the contestant chose to participate in the stupid contest, she can't be held responsible for her death, because she wasn't warned that there was a risk of it.
To top it off, the station involved hasn't even had the decency to post an apology on its website or to suspend the DJs involved. I guess they'll do that after they get hit with criminal manslaughter charges and a wrongful death suit. I bet that woman's three kids would just love to spend a few minutes alone with those DJs. I know I sure would.
I hope the FCC gets involved too. A really massive fine would teach radio stations that they have a duty of care to make sure that any events they host are reasonably safe. If "WKRP" was still in production today, they'd have a field day with this one!
It is strange that this is on YouTube with no other reference to the story in news or other areas. I was curious about the story and was keen to learn more about what happened. However, other than a couple of blogs and the youtube vid there isn't much about it yet. If this sort of thing doesn't receive much publicity in the mainstream news then radio stations wouldn't take notice.
The story all appears genuine enough but there are touches of urban legend about it already...I'd like to find more details...
F.Y.I., it is all over the national TV news. I think anonymous' points are well said.
Indeed, since I first posted about this story, there has been much more coverage. BoingBoing has a post which links to an L.A. Times story. And now the Obscure Store has a link to a Sacramento Bee story which says the radio program has been pulled from the air while an investigation is made. It's notable that many of the comments to the latter post seem to be taking the side of the station, saying the woman should have known it was dangerous and stopped herself from drinking any more water.
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