Tearful and contrite, two Australian radio hosts Monday described themselves as heartbroken over the apparent suicide of the nurse in England who took their prank call seeking information about Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge.
Mel Greig and Michael Christian said their impersonation of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles was a silly stunt that they never expected to succeed, let alone play a potential role in the death of Jacintha Saldhana, who worked at the hospital where Prince William's wife was being treated for acute morning sickness.
I'm not even comfortable with some charges of involuntary homicide. Unless the person being charged had reason to believe that his/her negligence could hurt someone, no one should be blamed, criminally, for a sheer accident.
When I was working as a social worker, a young woman got a year and a day in the state penitentiary for running over a 3-year old. She had done something I, and many people, have done. Her doctor called in a migraine prescription and she was in such pain that she took a pill before leaving the pharmacy. It never dawned on her that it would hit her before she drove home. She had no prior record, was a good woman and was devastated by the accident. Putting her in prison helped no one.
Now if, after knowing her story, I did the same thing, I would deserve a prison sentence. Luckily, I learned from her example.
However, to be honest and fair, there is no proof that she killed herself due to this incident and there never will be. All we know is that there's a tortured soul who's dead, and two radio hosts whose careers are over, for all intents and purposes, and they have to also live with the thought in their head that they killed this woman, even though that in all likelihood, they didn't. To be clear, I'm not attempting to martyr the radio hosts either, but this is just something that will never be discovered unless there is some evidence out there that has yet to be uncovered.
I don't know if such laws exist in Australia or the U.K. And if they do, I don't know if the Queen would qualify as a public official.
But in many countries, you can be charged with a crime for impersonating certain officials or public figures. Especially if it's done with the intent to dupe a person into behaving the way you want them to behave, as these two clowns on the radio clearly did.
I don't think it has anything to do with the female DJ pretending to be the Queen of England. I'm just guessing that "they took off" is how you say "pretended to be" in the UK - if I'm wrong, sorry.
I had a cousin (in his 50's) some years back. He applied for disability under Social Security and was denied. He and his family were building an A-Frame cabin in Northern Wisconsin, were reasonablly well off didn't have finanical problems, yet my cousin home alone one day out of the blue, hung himself from a rafter in the home he was building... over being denied a little extra cash. Maybe there were other issues too, but how nuts can you get?
His immediate family hid the truth from the rest of the family and I didn't find out until many years later from a friend of my cousin's mother that knew the truth.
If you feel like a fool fo being tricked, geeze get over it... in an hour tops and move on. Don't end your life, how stupid is that, especially when she was married and had a couple kids. Her (the nurse) taking her own life if true is far worse and a sin, and not something God will laugh at. In fact according to many beliefs sucide is the worse sin.
Not removing any sympathy for the suicided nurse, but JEEZ, she sure showed a serious lack of common sense and died at her own hand to atone for it, sad.