14 DAY TRIAL // What could have been a silly prank turned into a tragedy when a nurse who fell for the prank of two Australian radio DJs inquiring about Kate Middleton killed herself. Mel Greig and Michael Christina, the DJs in question, have now emerged out of hiding.
The two, working for Sidney-based 2Day radio station, called the hospital where the pregnant Duchess was hospitalized and managed to get confidential information about her condition.
The call was put through by nurse Jacintha Saldanha, who was found dead at a location near the hospital a short while afterwards. Her family is saying she died of shame.
As word of her suicide spread online, a fierce backlash against the two started. They suspended their radio show and went into hiding, avoiding to talk about the prank with the press – until now, that is.
According to the Daily Mail, the two DJs sat down for two unpaid television interviews, with an excerpt from one embedded below.
They admit to a share of responsibility in Saldanha’s gesture of taking her own life, but they stress that there was no way they could have foreseen such a tragedy.
As they put it, they never even hoped to have the call put through, let alone actually get intel on the Duchess. They thought it would be just a prank – and a funny one while at it, mostly because of their bad accents.
“The first thing I asked was: ‘Was she a mother?’” Greig says of her reaction when she got the call that the nurse had killed herself.
“If we played any involvement in her death then we’re very sorry. We couldn’t foresee what was going to happen,” she says.
“I've thought about it a million times. I want to reach out to them and just give them a big hug and say ‘Sorry.’ I hope they're OK. I really do,” she adds.
The two are now in counseling lest they do something to harm themselves, and to learn to cope with the violent backlash they’re still subject to.