So sad if true. Some peoples´ self destruct mechanism just seems to be on a hair trigger. Nevertheless, I offer no quarter to those dolts who made the call. Humor at someone elses´ expense is not funny, its cruel.

I do feel bad fir the DJs. Yes it was a stupid move, but certainly not one with any harm intended. DJs have been prank calling for years - juvenile? Yes. Criminal? No.

I don´t think the DJs can be punished any more severely than they have punished themselves. They did NOT cause this woman´s death.

What got lost in the initial hype is that this woman answered the phone call & was on for 6 short seconds.....simply saying she would connect with her administrator.----That´s all....that´s it.----It was the 2nd woman who gave out all the info....and she did not kill herself.

It´s possible that media outlets should hire people who don´t find such "pranks" to be a necessary ingredient in their success. No one will ever know for sure why the girl killed herself but we can know for sure that the prank was unnecessary and at the least designed to make another person look stupid. To what end?

I´m of two minds on this. The DJ´s were reckless in their behavior. People go to jail for this when a death is involved. Of course they meant no harm but of all the people to answer the phone, it was a woman with emotional problems to begin with.

I do think the DJ´s need to answer for this. I don´t know if I´d put them in prison. I would probably go for a lot of community service. Crying and apologizing isn´t enough.

I feel bad for everyone who feels bad about this. This woman´s suicide affected a lot of people around her, as most suicides do, and impacted even those far away. Mental illness manifests itself in numerous ways - how many times and ways do we need to have before us before we deal properly with those who have the illness?

What those DJ´s did is not criminal. It wasn´t even unusual. The woman herself had weaknesses that could have been foreseen but this hospital employed her for whatever reason(s) - maybe as part of rehab or to not ´discriminate´ - but she was unstable to start with. The DJ´s could not have known that their goofy call - which is all it was - would go to her for first handling, and that she´d handle it so poorly. They didn´t ask for their call to be answered by her, they didn´t expect that she would put the call on through, and they certainly didn´t intend for her to kill herself because of her error in protocol.

Let the grieving grieve, and be done with the publicity of this sad event.

Finally, a little perspective. The fact that the nurse was unstable is obvious by her act. I think the whole royally-hyped story is ludicrous and the DJs ought to get their jobs back. There´s already far too much censorship. If we have to moderate every single thing we do and say in the event it may set off an already troubled person we are doomed.

Please, please, please, can we finally outlaw DJ´s? Even when they are not loaded they are dangerous. Or telephones, those calls can kill people, you know...

The whole world has gone nuts.

I knew there was much more to the story. I figured she was a depressive. It is just sad and really, the dj´s had nothing to do with this since she attempted at least twice before in the last year prior to her completed act.

Take this nurse out of the equation, and the DJ´s still distracted professional health care workers from their job of caring for sick people to play a trick on them that accomplished nothing.

I´m sure the offending DJ´s would be offended if a prank player distracted their favorite barista from getting the foam just right on their Latte.

This illustrates well the old saying "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." If the DJs had had that thought in mind, they might have hesitated before callously using someone they didn´t know for something as trivial as a "Gotcha!" prank. I don´t believe they should be put in jail for this, but I would ostracize them for it. They failed in their duty to another human being.

11, that is a beautiful saying. I never heard it before but will put it near the top of my "keep in mind" list.

Aha. As I suspected and posted.

A normal IQ and common sense should have told the DJs that someone would take the fall for their juvenile and mindless gotcha prank. Regardless of the reason for this woman´s suicide, what they did was despicable. And it was not funny. They are not entertaining. Just stupid.

#11 gets it right. Humor at another´s expense is cruelty.

When something like this occurs, many suspect that the person - because of their extreme response - had an underlying problem. There is no genius involved in that. That does not mean that that is true, however.

In another time, in another place, this woman might have been put to death for causing discomfort of any kind to royalty. The notion that she bore no responsibility because she simply passed the call on to the charge nurse would not be satisfactory to such a person. In her own mind, as the initial contact, she would have taken responsibility.

Oh come on "bleeding hearts"!This was an innocent prank that turned out bad. No fault of the D J´s!! What _is_ cruel is the way that the D J´s have been treated.

Ted in Michigan

Very well-said, #11. The legal dept. of the radio station ok´d the prank before the DJs did it, so I´m sure they´re in the clear legally.

However, we live in an increasingly coarse and vulgar culture where it is just the very thing to laugh at other people´s vulnerabilities or shortcomings. Not cool. Not cool at all. Oh, for the return of gentility and civilized behavior. :bleaksigh:

#11 and #17 said it all - being kind because everyone is fighting a hard battle, and the desperate need for civility in our society. A friend wrote the best Christmas gift she´s giving this year is a clean slate. We could all use that.

What upsets me about this, other than the nurse´s suicide, is the cultural ethos that makes a goof like that such a huge scandal, that it would make someone wish they were dead.

Tabloid/paparazzi hysteria and harassment might need to be forcibly restrained in England. (And increasingly so, among the MSM in the USA.)

At the time of this poor soul´s demise I had stated that there was SOMETHING more than what was being reported.

When I was a kid, a "fun" thing to do was to dash out, slap a car and fall down in the street feigning that the kid had been hit- then when the alarmed driver got out, the kid sprinks up and dases off laughing- Har, har! Watchers on the curb thought it was hilarious- then an elderly woman came driving by, "hit" the prankster, got out, saw the prone child and collapsed- literally dropped dead on the spot from the shock. Of course, the kids escaped (fortunately, I was not present). But, the disaster greatly grieved the kids, who were caught, and of course, only shamed for they had committed no ´real" crime. But, I knew those kids and how they suffered for it. Even years later they had deep regrets for their foolish actions- I am so glad I had not been one of them. I expect, these DJ´s are going through the same level of anguish. There are more severe punishments than prison. 30 years from now, I guarantee you, they will still suffer for it.

I agree, #21. And I notice that while many have reacted to this tragedy by bluffing it out, and protesting that it was just innocent fun, and the nurse was wrong to take it so seriously, that´s not been the reaction of the DJs who set the whole tragedy in motion by their call. They sound, and I hope, really ARE, upset and guilt-stricken by what´s happened. I believe they´re going through what those kids you knew went through, and very likely will be permanently marked by it. And I can´t say that I think that that´s unfair. Someone is dead; that´s a terrible thing to have on one´s conscience.

The DJs did nothing wrong. Would a receptionist feel responsible for this if she´d simply forwarded the call? Just like with most recent news stories, we were originally led to believe erroneous information, that it was the woman who killed herself who had given out all of the information. We all now know she just transferred the call.

It is telling that there are no photos that I´ve seen of that woman smiling. She was a sick, unhappy woman from all accounts. The DJs have been beaten up enough.