October 30, 2009 9:58 AM

Jennifer Strange's Family Awarded $16.5 Million in "Wee for Wii" Contest Death

By
Sammy Rose Saltzman
Topics
Daily Blotter
(CBS 13)
Photo: Jennifer Strange.

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) The family of Jennifer Strange, a California woman who died after participating in a radio station's water-drinking contest, has been awarded $16.5 million by a California jury.

Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old Rancho Cordova, Calif. mother of three, died of acute water intoxication in January, 2007 after the challenge to see which contestant could drink the most water without using the restroom. A Nintendo Wii video game was the prize for winning the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest.

At the time of the incident, Laura Rios, one of Strange's co-workers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento said Strange "said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad... She was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her."

Strange was found dead Friday, January 12, 2007, hours after the contest.

On Thursday, Sacramento County jurors found Entercom Sacramento LLC, a subsidiary of Philadelphia-based Entercom Communications Corp., liable for the actions of its employees at Sacramento radio station KDND-FM. The station fired 10 employees after the death.


Add a Comment
by danaseilhan November 3, 2009 2:13 AM EST
Um, guys? It's not real widely known that it's possible for someone to die from drinking too much water. The only reason I knew about it was I happened to read it in a trivia book when I was a kid. They do not teach you this in school and most parents don't know it to pass on to their kids. The radio station people knew, and obviously couldn't be bothered to warn the contest participants. Why does that make the participants "stupid"? If they had been drinking cyanide, then I could understand--that one is well-known in the popular consciousness.
Reply to this comment
by oldman47701 October 30, 2009 11:42 AM EDT
Ummm--DO not know about anyone else but---COMMON SENSE tells me anything in excess is bad..So why the 16m..oh yes--reward for being STUPID...
Reply to this comment
by scoobydob October 30, 2009 4:48 PM EDT
this amount has got to be overturned on appeal. even if the station was stupid enough to not make her sign a waver, nobody made her particpate. it's tragic but that is a rediculous amount for her being stupid enough to risk her health for a 250 dollar machine.
.

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