Woman Killed In Wii-Related Competition

snuffin writes to tell us that a local radio competition to "hold your wee for a Wii" has ended with a Sacramento woman dead from water poisoning. From the article: "An Associated Press interview with another contestant, named James Ybarra, claimed that contestants were initially given eight ounce bottles of water to drink every fifteen minutes, with larger bottles being used once contestants began to drop out. According to Ybarra, 'They told us if you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk.' He described the victim as 'a nice lady' and that 'she was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for her kids.'"

Mmm...

[EinZweiDrei (955497)]

What a stupid world.

Re:Mmm...

[x2A (858210)]

Yeah I nearly pissed myself laughing when I heard about it yesterday, but the irony was too much to handle, and I passed out.

Re:Mmm...

[by Anonymous Coward]

No, but got pissed instead.

Killed??

[celardore (844933)]

A woman wasn't killed, she died as a result of self induced water intoxication. It's a difference that means a lot. The headline makes it sound like a sport killing of some kind. Would have been more appropriate to say "Woman dies In Wii-Related Competition".

Re:Killed??

[GiovanniZero (1006365)]

This title is completely ridiculous. It's sensationalist and makes it look like someone died using the Wii. The womans death has nothing to do with a Wii, it could have been a competition for anything.

Re:Killed??

[jafiwam (310805)]

Yes, and every poor sap that gets hit by a beer truck chasing his poodle across the road is also an "alcohol related traffic accident". (Unless the truck is empty at the time.)

The headline is misleading not in that it is inaccurate, but in that it lets someone draw the wrong conclusion about what it is saying. Excusable only if there is no other way to say the same thing without the unintended implication.

"Killed in Wii-related competition" sounds like she was next to some fat geek swinging the controller around and he hit her breaking her neck. "Wii-related" is only really means "during it's normal intended use".

The headline is more suitable for Fark, not here.

Re:Killed??

[BakaHoushi (786009)]

I disagree. Nintendo should NOT be held liable in any way, shape, or form. If the death of this woman was DIRECTLY related to the use of a Wii (for example, the Wii-mote exploded because of direct contact with something) that'd be one thing. However, the reason for her death was only related to a competition. This competition's ONLY connection to Nintendo was that Nintendo sold these people a system, which they then offered as a prize in a publicity stunt.

If I offer you a new Honda Civic car if you'll run across a busy highway naked, and you get hit by a truck and killed, should HONDA be held responsible because they made their product "too desirable?" Fuck no. The only people who should be held accountable should be me for being an asshole, and you for being an idiot that listened to an asshole.

What about competitions that offer money as a reward? Should the U.S. mint be held accountable for people getting hurt while trying to earn money?

All I'm saying is, people want things. Always. They offered something for free, and someone died because of it. There is no harm in playing a Wii system. In that regard, Nintendo has done their job. There certainly IS, however, a danger in playing Russian Roulette for one. So, Nintendo has nothing to do with this. Only the woman and the radio station. So until a Wii itself hurts someone, and not what people would do for one (and those damn Klondike bars. *MY* great grandmother died because someone shot her for one...) Nintendo's clean.

Re:Killed??

[starwed (735423)]

It's a bit harsh to call it stupidity; water poisoning isn't that well known.

Re:Killed??

[theGil (1010409)]

I agree. The darwinaward tag made me frown...not everyone knew it could be fatal.

Re:Killed??

[BakaHoushi (786009)]

Plus, it's rather inaccurate. By definition, a Darwin Award is given to someone by "helping to ensure their genes do not get passed on." This woman had three kids. Her genes are already out there. So, technically, she's already passed them on... you know, before SHE passed on.

Geeze... it sucks for her kids. To have their mother die, because of an idiotic stunt in order to make a urine joke. God, I'd hate to see their therapy bills when they get older.

Re:Killed??

[Intron (870560)]

Very relevant to slashdot:

"No one before Tycho had attempted to make so many redundant observations."

Re:Killed??

[theGil (1010409)]

Knowledge is not a prerequisite for a Darwin award, though lack thereof often is.

I disagree. The author of darwinawards.com lays out "Excelennce", or an "Astounding misapplication of judgement" as a prerequisite. Look at the other comments on this page. Many people didn't think drinking large quantities of water could kill you...just not something everyone thinks of.

Re:Killed??

[celardore (844933)]

It's a bit harsh to call it stupidity; water poisoning isn't that well known.

It is a condition that is known by users of the ecstasy community though, especially after Leah Betts [wikipedia.org], a case that happened in the UK some years back. I've known several people in this lifestyle and they were always conscious of the amount of water they were drinking - even when high as a kite. Not too much, but not too little either.

The knowledge is out there, just whether you've heard it or not.

Re:Killed??

[AxemRed (755470)]

I agree. Most people don't realize that you can die from drinking too much water at once. I was telling my friend about this story, and his response was: "Water? How much did she drink? I have drank 20 beers in a night and not died, and all she drank was water!"

I had to explain to him about alcohol being a diuretic and about excessive water upsetting the electrolyte balance in your blood. Anyway, the point is, I wouldn't say that she is stupid for not knowing this. People aren't generally taught about this problem because it's very unlikely to happen. The only reason that I knew about this was from another similar news story about 8 years ago.

Re:Killed??

[alta (1263)]

I agree with all your statements. Add to this the fact that most people don't get ENOUGH water, and are told to drink MORE water, this just makes it worse. As a whole, I think the population is problably more dehydrated than over hydrated. Look at how much coke, tea and coffee the we (U.S.) drink, compared to just plain water.

Re:Killed??

[value_added (719364)]

It's a bit harsh to call it stupidity ...

Fercryinoutloud, she was drinking dihydrogen monoxide!!!

Dunno about you, but everyone knows that's dangerous stuff. Been in an airport recently? The terrorists are now using it.

More info here [dhmo.org]!

Re:Killed??

[s20451 (410424)]

However, ignorance is no defence. Stressing your body always incurs a serious risk.

Right, so the hell with exercise.

Re:Killed??

[metamatic (202216)]

This is Slashdot, people are more likely to remember Douglas Adams.

Re:Killed??

[Eccles (932)]

Jim Fixx died at age 52. In comparison, his father had a heart attack at 35 and died of another heart attack at age 42. It may be that Fixx's running added a decade to his life, as he still died of a heart attack triggered by extreme cholesterol blockages of his arteries.

Re:Killed??

[roscivs (923777)]

I'm surprised (on some level) that a soldier listening to the station didn't call to say it was a bad idea.

Actually, some reports are saying that a nurse called in and warned that drinking too much water is dangerous. See http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16466174.htm [miami.com] for example.

Gina Sherrod, who competed with Strange in the contest, said her family listened to the radio show, and told her that a nurse was on air warning that drinking too much water is dangerous. Sherrod said a DJ rebuffed the nurse, saying the contestants signed waivers that addressed only publicity issues and made no mention of health or safety concerns.

For that reason, I think the studio should be held liable.

Re:Killed??

[Iamthefallen (523816)]

She was killed by her own stupidity

If we're picking words, then I'd say she was killed by her ignorance, not stupidity.

If she knew that excess water consumption can kill you, then yes, she was stupid and the station doesn't have a liability.

But did she know that? Did the station inform her? Did the station know? When she started to feel sick, is it reasonable to expect her to go to the emergency room just for drinking water? And even if she had, was it already too late at that point?

I just have questions, not answers, but I also reserve judgment until the details are known.

Re:Killed??

[ocbwilg (259828)]

But did she know that? Did the station inform her? Did the station know? When she started to feel sick, is it reasonable to expect her to go to the emergency room just for drinking water? And even if she had, was it already too late at that point?

According to this [fmqb.com] related article, a nurse called in to the radio station and told them that drinking water like that could be dangerous, and was rebuffed by the DJs. Regardless of whether that was true, it's pretty clear that someone is going to get the shit sued out of them.

Re:Killed??

[FeTrut (254033)]

Not only is it ridiculous to assume that she had *enough* facts, but the tone of your entire post is insulting and for lack of a better term, soulless.
There are 3 children out there who just lost their mother due to a competition noone would have expected could end in death and you see fit to call her stupid and issue glib remarks like "Lady 3 - Darwin 0". I'm sorry, but i find that a bit disgusting.

With regard to her supposed stupidity, the keyword is expected. It's not enough to know that you *could* die from something. I know i could die driving home today, even greater chance because the roads are snowy and icy. If someone veers out of control and hits me on the highway and i die, am i to be called stupid because i decided to drive today? I don't expect to, and neither do the hundreds of thousands of other people out driving.

It seems a lot of people, and me included, before today assumed that drinking a lot of water results in the side effect of needing to pee really bad.

Eating competitions are a widespread recognized sport these days, you don't see Kobayashi dying from eating 50 hot dogs, why should anyone *expect* to die from drinking a lot of water?

The symptoms afterwards were, as far as i know, a bad headache. Well hell, i'd go home and pop and asprin, the last thing i'd be thinking is i need to be hospitalized.

I guess i'm stupid too.

There is a middle voice

[tepples (727027)]

Sorry, may be wrong here, but I thought passive (voice) verbs occurred when the subject of the sentence was not the one committing the action. To say that, "She died." is to say that she was the one undertaking the dying action, which is an action

"She died" is middle voice [wikipedia.org], as are many other intransitive verbs in English. The active and passive voices of this clause are "She killed" and "She was killed". The forms "killed" vs. "died" show suppletion [wikipedia.org] per voice in the same way that "go" vs. "went" show suppletion per tense.

sheesh

[yagu (721525)]

This is not some mysterious malady. The radio station is off the scale negligent for putting contestants in the position of potential serious harm:

• Wiki [google.com]
• another [google.com]
• another [google.com]
• answers.com [answers.com]

I'd had this argument many times with a friend about my water intake. I've always known my intake was fine (hint: coffee counts...), but in the course of that discussion I found many articles on the problems one could encounter by drinking too much water.

I won't claim any person on the street should know the dangers of drinking too much water, but the people putting on this contest (sorry, stunt) could have recognized they were in deep waters with a modicum of research.

I'm not much for lawsuits, but I hope the radio station that put on this stunt makes significant remedy to the lady's family.

Re:sheesh

[blibbler (15793)]

I'm not much for lawsuits, but I hope the radio station that put on this stunt makes significant remedy to the lady's family

Well at least they should give her three kids a wii.

Re:sheesh

[phasm42 (588479)]

This article [playfuls.com] has more details; they say that a nurse had called during the contest to warn them about it:

During the contest, a nurse called in to the station warn of the dangers of drinking too much water quickly. Her worries were dismissed by the disc jockey, The Bee reported.

They also mention that the winner felt pretty sick afterwards as well.

Re:sheesh

[yagu (721525)]

My point is/was that to the casual observer (and contestant), signing a waiver and being "warned" (I didn't see anything in the article to suggest they warned how dangerous this was) would seem a mere "standard" formality and for the purposes of participating in a water-drinking contest, absurd. But, the radio station, as I pointed out, with minimal research should have known going in this was dangerous and not even hosted this contest.

The only difference I see between this and a contest where contestants drink as much alcohol as possible to win a Wii is that to the common man, dangers and risks associated with alcohol are much more widely known and understood. And, no radio station in the world would get away with having contestants drink alcohol in a similar fashion, waivers and warnings or not.

Re:sheesh

[bloodstar (866306)]

The radio station is the one holding the contest. Drinking too much water is a non obvious danger. But the radio station is the one who should perform the due dilligance.

Just because we happen to know that water can be dangerous doesn't mean other people do. And certainly expecting a mother of 3 doing a 'contest' that sounds like something fun and silly to expect any danger from the contest is unreasonable.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that generally people, rightly or wrongly, Trust people in charge. Think of the Milgram Experiment as an extreme example. Even though the objectives of the experiment are different, it shows the same underlying principle: people generally listen to people they think are athority figures. And in this case, the contest holders are the athority figures.

Beyond the lawsuit, I would not be shocked to see criminal charges against the people who ran the contest. Their actions directly led to the death of another person.

So...

[ucblockhead (63650)]

If I have a contest whereby the person who drinks the most vodka in a 3 hour period wins an XBox360, any alcohol poisoning deaths aren't my fault?

Hey, I have an idea! Let's have a contest where people shoot apples off each other's heads William Tell style! I bet that'd get great ratings!

Re:sheesh

[TeraCo (410407)]

IIRC (we had a private die in training a few years ago with this sort of thing), the symptoms that you're coming down with water related death include becoming thirsty.

Yeah, that's an easy one to read.

A nebulous "quit if you feel sick" warning isn't good enough when she could have done the harm before she started to notice any dangerous side effects.

Re:sheesh

[vought (160908)]

...besides it being completely voluntary and them telling her that she should quit if she feels at risk healthwise.


By the time she felt sick, she was liely past the threshold of easy assistance.

Administering an emetic would not have helped when she felt the onset of a headache - there was already significant edema in her brain and cardiac muscles.

The radio station is in big trouble here. They should have known better, especially when a kid from the commuter college up the road died from water toxicity almost exactly two years ago. [sfgate.com]

As God is my witness...

[RobertB-DC (622190)]

... I thought turkeys could fly. [about.com]

In other news...

[meta-monkey (321000)]

In other news, a Kansas City man died after slipping in pools of urine surrounding PS3 boxes at a local Best Buy.

isotonic drink ...

[AtomicBomb (173897)]

Before calling the poor woman a lemming/ a candidate for Darwin's award blahblahblah, I got to ask why can't they (the organisers) supply isotonic sports drink in this sort of competition?

Water intoxication is more common than many of us would like to think. It is part of the reason why many marathons now supply sports drink in addition to water. Newbies in many cases either don't drink enough or cannot stop drinking until water drains them from the inside.

Her family

[inKubus (199753)]

Sorry in advance:

Her family is probably pretty "Pissed". This contest really went down the "Toilet". I can't believe how it's been "Sprayed" all over the news. Talk about a "Drinking Problem". As said to the second place contestant: "Urine" luck! I guess she didn't really get a fair "Shake".

Dangerous!

[Aladrin (926209)]

Dihydrogen Monoxide is Dangerous! They've been telling us for years, but we just don't listen!

http://www.dhmo.org/ [dhmo.org]

This problem can be solved with legislation

[PingSpike (947548)]

Clearly this water stuff is a dangerous substance that needs to be controlled. I think it should only be available from behind the pharmacy counter, that way kids don't get ahold of it and drink themselves to death.

Plagarising Bastards!

[elviscious (681985)]

From the article:

Water intoxication (also known as hyperhydration or water poisoning) is a potentially fatal disturbance in brain function that results when the normal balance of electrolytes in the body is upset by a rapid intake of water.

From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

Water intoxication (also known as hyperhydration or water poisoning) is a potentially fatal disturbance in brain function that results when the normal balance of electrolytes in the body is pushed outside of safe limits by a very rapid intake of water.

What is this 8th grade English class?

Obligatory link

[pctainto (325762)]

Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]

Basically, the combination of you drinking too much water and not getting rid of it throws your electrolytes out of whack... you have too much water, so the concentration of electrolytes isn't high enough for your body to carry signals. It happens a lot with marathon runners. Especially runners that don't stop to pee. Many people have died from this even though they were getting enough because they refused to pee out the excess water.

Gatorade?

[HunterZ (20035)]

Why the heck didn't they use Gatorade instead of water?

Complain to Their Advertisers

[RedSynapse (90206)]

The KDND website has a list of all the companies that advertise with them [endonline.com].

I've put together the following email addresses of KDND's sponsors, so if you think that the folks at KDND are a bunch of negligent twits who probably don't deserve their advertising dollars then why not email these companies and let them know?

[e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail] You can also contact KDND's general sales manager at [e-mail]

Re:Call the Darwin awards

[dewie (685736)]

If you can't figure out why a mother of three is ineligible for the Darwin Awards, I think you may need to climb out of the gene pool yourself.

No, no, no

[User 956 (568564)]

They should have had them drinking Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator. It's got what Moms crave. It's got electrolytes.

Re:Man, even water can kill you!

[x2A (858210)]

Here in UK there've been a few "ecstacy deaths", last a few years ago, that turned out not to be the ecstacy as such, but drinking too much water to avoid dehydration and overcompensating. You need to replace your body salts when drinking, or they get flushed out, and organs will fail.

Other risks come from the chlorine put in tap water to stop bacteria from growing - well the bacteria in your guts you kind of need, for digestion etc. Boiling the water first evaporates off the chlorine, otherwise, you're disinfecting yourself everytime you drink it, an accumulative effect.

Re:Man, even water can kill you!

[Pojut (1027544)]

This is why they reccommend when you have a fever you drink Gatorade or some other sport drink...because these help keep your electrolytes high, the chances of your dying from (or being affected by) over-hydration are reduced drastically

Re:Man, even water can kill you!

[leathered (780018)]

Other risks come from the chlorine put in tap water to stop bacteria from growing - well the bacteria in your guts you kind of need, for digestion etc. Boiling the water first evaporates off the chlorine, otherwise, you're disinfecting yourself everytime you drink it, an accumulative effect.,

Speaking as a former water scientist, this is complete BS. The residual levels of chlorine in drinking water in the UK are minimal, usually no more than 1 mg/l, and are maintained as a precaution to prevent contamination in the ditribution system. There is no way that this amount is capable of destroying bacteria in the gut, and chlorine being the highly reactive element that it is will combine with the first thing it finds when it hits your stomach and render it useless as a disinfectant.

Re:Man, even water can kill you!

[R3d M3rcury (871886)]

Water--or dihydrogen monoxide--is a dangerous chemical that we treat far too lightly! Water contributes to global warming, soil erosion, and caused the levee failures in New Orleans!

Become informed of the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide [dhmo.org] before it's too late!

Re:They should have...

[sokoban (142301)]

Btw, I still think this is insane. The body should just pass any water it doesn't need straight to the bladder.

Maybe you should submit a bug report or take this issue up with the dev team.

Re:"Sue into the poorhouse"?

[Skyshadow (508)]

I'm trying to understand your comment, and I see three possibilities. Either:

(a) You believe this woman intentionally got herself killed in order to collect easy money from the radio station.
(b) You don't believe that the radio station, which set the rules of this contest and provided enticement for people to participate, was at all negligent in not exploring the possible injuries that could result from it.
(c) Your comment had nothing to do with this case, you just have a problem with lawsuits in general.

Assuming (c), I feel like I should point out that, given the facts as we currently understand them, this would hardly be a frivolous lawsuit. The radio station was clearly negligent in not exploring the hazards of what they were encouraging people to do and, although you may not think it's fair, they have an obligation under the law to do so.

Furthermore, the example you cited with the GPS, aside from sounding like an obvious urban legend, doesn't actually map to this situation. Anyone with a driver's license should know that you look before you turn your car, but understanding the risks of this sort of contest would require some basic medical training. It is therefore reasonable to expect a driver to look before turning and not reasonable to expect the average person to understand the health risks of this sort of activity.

Which is, ultimately, why we as a society have lawsuits like this. The radio station was obligated to do their due-diligence before enticing people into this behavior. And that's why they're going to get clobbered by the lawsuit that will come from this.