VideoVirus

First On-Air Suicide In Sarasota, FL!

• Posted by zac on June 8th, 2006 filed in Demise

Christine Chubbuck (also named “Chris Hubbock” by some sources) (August 24, 1944 July 15, 1974) was a Hudson, Ohio native and an American television news reporter who committed suicide during a live television broadcast.On July 15, 1974 at 9:38 AM, 8 minutes into her talk show, Suncoast Digest, on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she drew out a .38 caliber revolver and shot herself in the head. She died at Sarasota Memorial Hospital 14 hours later.According to her co-workers working the day of her suicide she took the unusual step of excusing herself to write her script for the newscast. She normally opened her show with an interview and conducted an informal half hour; she never once opened her show with a newscast. She also placed under her desk a bag of puppets that she had occasionally used during a broadcast and also to entertain local children. Hidden in the bag was the revolver. Before her newscast she told the producer that she wanted them to get ready a film of a shooting that happened the weekend before and then she took her seat. After three pieces of news, she led into the shooting piece but without the film because it wouldn’t run correctly. It was here that she delivered her last words:”In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts in living color, we bring you another first, an attempted suicide.”She then shot herself. The technical director reacted quickly enough to cut the on-air video to black a split-second before she pulled the trigger. Sally Quinn, a Washington Post journalist, wrote an extensive article about Chubbuck. In it, Quinn described the suicide in graphic detail.[1] This recounting has lead to speculation about the existence of a video.The “script” Chubbuck had written was actually the story of her own suicide attempt, detailing how she’d be taken to the hospital and declared to be in critical condition. She was the first person to ever broadcast her own suicide on live television.Three weeks before her suicide she had asked the station’s news director if she could do a news piece on suicide. After getting her pitch approved she called the local police department to discuss with an officer methods of suicide. In the interview he told her that one of the most efficient ways was to use a .38 caliber revolver and with hollow point bullets, which would disintegrate on impact, and to shoot oneself in the back of the head (which Chubbuck did) rather than in the temple. A week before her suicide she told a co-worker that she bought a gun and joked about killing herself on air.Her mother, in an interview granted the day of the suicide, said Christine was very depressed and had few friends or romantic interests. An article in the August 4, 1974 issue of The Washington Post revealed that Chubbuck lived with her mother up until the time of her death, and was also a virgin.