Christine Fairweather was struck by a vehicle while removing barriers which were moved onto State Highway 3 from another location.
When Hawera woman Christine Fairweather saw fences blocking a busy highway, she didn't hesitate. In pouring rain late one Saturday night last month, the 57-year-old grandmother stopped her car to try to move the barriers off the road.
Fairweather's aunt, Trish Coleman, says it was just the sort of thing her niece did. She had been babysitting her grandchildren and was heading home when the accident happened.
"She always put people first, before herself. She was very caring."
Police said the frames had been put around cable work on the footpath but someone had intentionally moved them to State Highway 3 at Normanby in South Taranaki.
Fairweather had put on her car's hazard lights when she stopped to move the barrier, but they were of little use in the bad weather.
A northbound vehicle struck Fairweather and she died at the scene, despite the attempts of the driver to resuscitate her.
Her husband, John, told Radio New Zealand: "If it's a prank and a joke, it's cost a lot of people grief and we're devastated. I'll never be the same again."
Police are still trying to work out who put the fencing in the middle of the road and say that is their main focus. But they are also conducting inquiries with the driver of the vehicle that hit Fairweather and aren't ruling out charges.
Fairweather's family said: "The consequences of the actions of the person or people who placed the roadwork framing on the road are long-reaching. Not only is our family dealing with loss and shock, but we also understand that the driver of the car and his family must be grieving, too."
Read more about the most recent 'prank gone wrong' below:
*'A simple silly prank' - Coach
*School sorry over girl's street strip - second incident revealed
Fairweather's death is an example of how fooling about or playing a prank can go terribly wrong. Youngsters often learn the hard way, pulling away the chair of a school mate as he or she is about to sit down. The resulting tears, bruising and even injury is a sharp shock to kids who thought the prank would be funny.
Marc Wilson, the head of psychology at Victoria University, says pranks can build camaraderie and solidify bonds. There's generally an expectation that those who pull a prank will become the butt of one in the not-too-distant future.
"A culture of pranking is based on an assumption of reciprocity. That's to say, 'I'll get you back for this'. If it's always one person doing the pranking it stops being funny and, given that many pranks of the 'funniest home videos' variety usually involve someone getting hurt or annoyed, the anticipation of reciprocity is important for mitigating the risk of pissed-offness.
"People who prank others but don't like being pranked are told, 'Don't dish it out if you can't take it'," he says.
Napier lawyer Philip Ross was part of a group who dreamed up a capping stunt in 1984, informing Remuera residents that approval for a marae had been granted in their neighbourhood. But the prank worked a little too well. One woman was so upset she put her house on the market.
At the time, the future of Hobson Park, which was owned by the Dilworth Trust and home to a hockey pitch, was in doubt.
The students made up a fictitious department, the Urban Multicultural Integration Division, and wrote a waffly letter telling Remuera residents that a licence had been granted to build a marae on the hockey pitch.
The "closing date for submissions" had passed when the letter was thrust into letterboxes overnight one Wednesday.
Coach Mike Stephen, pictured here at his home, just recently lost his job because of a prank.
When alarmed residents rang the phone number on the letter, they found themselves talking to the Auckland City Council. "I think most people realised it was a capping stunt and thought it was a bit of a laugh," Ross says.
By Friday the stunt was on the front page of the NZ Herald. "A few people made a bit of a fuss. No one made any effort to ascertain who we were and the Auckland City Council bore the brunt of it as irate Remuera residents phoned in."
Another university prank, the "grand interplanetary hoax" of 1952, staged at the University of Otago, rattled households all around the country. The plan was that Knox College students, tired of what they thought was the Otago Daily Times' preoccupation with UFO sightings, would report seeing a flying saucer at various points around New Zealand on December 6, once they headed home for the holidays.
The "UFO sighting" made headlines in every newspaper. It was helped by a report from a United States Air Force bomber pilot who saw unidentified flying objects over the Gulf of Mexico the same night.
Harmless fun, most would agree, but not all pranks end the way they were intended.
There's no shortage of high-profile pranks gone wrong. This month, a St Cuthbert's College first XI football team initiation involved a 16-year-old stripping to her underwear, fishnets, a dog collar and chains in central Rotorua. Another student was told to run through a Pak'n Save supermarket in a bikini.
The girls were turned away from their Rotorua Winter Tournament, kept off school for a week and coach Mike Stephen lost his job.
Stephen told the Herald on Sunday: "This is a lovely bunch of girls. They're the ones who are suffering. There is some serious hurt going on for a simple, silly prank that should never have happened if I had done my job properly."
A prank gone wrong ended the career of a high-profile Australian rugby league player this year. Todd Carney was sacked from the Cronulla Sharks after photos of him, apparently spraying urine skyward and drinking it, went viral.
Carney's mate Mick Robinson took the photos and forwarded them to his brother, who promptly lost his phone at the races. Whoever found the phone circulated the photos on the internet.
Carney later said news that the photo had gone public was "gut-wrenching". "It was just a prank. As much as it hurts Cronulla, it's hurt my pride and dignity and hurt my mum and sisters."
Radio hosts Michael Christian and Mel Greig, below, phoned King Edward Hospital, above, to ask about the condition of the Duchess of Cambridge who was suffering from morning sickness.
The most infamous prank of recent times involved two Australian radio hosts who called the King Edward VII hospital in London where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated during her pregnancy. Michael Christian and Mel Greig rang up impersonating the Queen and Prince Charles.
Although their accents were terrible, and a producer was making what was meant to be the sound of a corgi yapping in the background, nurse Jacintha Saldanha transferred the call to a colleague, who gave details of the Duchess' acute morning sickness.
Three days later, Saldanha was found dead. An inquest into her death this week found she had committed suicide. Greig, who gave evidence at the inquest, is yet to return to her career in radio.
Pranks gone wrong have led to the death of other Kiwis, too. In 2000, Gareth MacFadyen, 24, died after a colleague set fire to his grass skirt while he was in a toilet cubicle at a Merrill Lynch Christmas party in Auckland. A woman who was in the cubicle with him was also burned.
Gareth MacFadyen, 24, died after a colleague set fire to his grass skirt at a Christmas party.
The prankster, Matthew Scho-field, had reportedly been playing jokes throughout the evening, trying to set alight people's hats.
That case is cited on the website of Californian lawyer Daniel Jensen, who advertises he will help defend people who face charges over pranks gone wrong. He uses two cases as an example: MacFadyen's death and that of a British man who suffered severe burns after a night of drinking.
A friend jokingly set fire to his shoelaces as he lay passed out. The man later had to have his lower leg amputated and the prankster was jailed for four years.
Two years ago, comedian Ben Boyce and radio DJ Bryce Casey ended up in court after trying to get into a restricted area at Auckland Airport.
As part of a skit for TV series Wanna-Ben, Casey dressed in a fake pilot's uniform and tried to get into a restricted area in the domestic terminal.
Boyce, Casey and producer Andrew Robinson were warned they could face up to 12 months in prison and a $10,000 fine. They were discharged without conviction but Boyce paid $2000 in reparation and did 75 hours' community work.
Prime Minister John Key said the stunt was "irresponsible from a bunch of clowns who should know better". The Airline Pilots' Association said the men should be imprisoned. Three other men involved were fined $250.
But it didn't put Boyce off pranking - he now fronts late-night skit show Jono and Ben at Ten and an afternoon radio show on The Rock FM with Jono Pryor. The two regularly pull pranks on each other and members of the public.
When Pryor spray-painted his face on Boyce's new carpet, Boyce had Pryor's classic Holden Kingswood covered in strips of his old carpet and Super Turf artificial grass.
They roped in race driver Greg Murphy for a double-cross stunt where he posed as a mechanic who had given a car a WOF fail - then painted its windscreen. The "owner" of the failed car was an actor who came back threatening to smash the cars, giving Boyce a scare, who'd thought the prank had gone very wrong.
Pryor says the pair try to keep all their pranks good-natured. "If it's not mean, I'd consider that a success. The idea is we want to make people feel the same or better at the end as they did at the start."
At the end of their regular radio prank calls, the participants get $500. "We try to make them feel better than going in. We don't want anyone to leave feeling shitty."
Things can turn nasty when you can't easily gauge the reactions of the person being pranked, he says.
"We've done a couple on radio. You don't know what mood someone is in when you call them, you can't see them or the reactions they're giving, it's harder to gauge that."
That was likely where the Australian DJs went wrong in calling the British hospital, Pryor says. "That was a horrendous situation. The people going in and doing that, it was the last thing they expected.
"You just don't know how people are feeling. The call was relatively innocent in the grand scheme of things but the amount of coverage it got afterwards, the poor lady obviously just couldn't handle the attention."
Marc Wilson says pranks are most likely to go wrong when the outcome is uncontrollable, or relies on the victim behaving in a particular way.
"For example - and I've seen a video of this - you call someone into the garage to see the small bonfire you've made on their car bonnet, and that someone proceeds to beat at the flames rather than run around waving their arms humorously, or grabbing a fire extinguisher, spreading them even further so that other things catch fire."
Justin Bieber caused two households to be bombarded with calls as fans tried to call him after he had posted prank note online.
Ian Lambie, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Auckland who has worked with young offenders, says a lot of people regularly do things that are probably illegal but never lead to negative consequences.
"You might steal street signs or put road cones on top of huge trees. These are things people do and the consequences are not that bad. At worst you might get told off or get a police warning."
Most of us constantly weigh up risk in our heads. We might risk a parking ticket if we stay too long shopping in town because the cost isn't too high. But we wouldn't park on yellow lines because being towed is a consequence too far.
Sometimes, particularly under the influence of alcohol or youthful energy, that consideration of consequences goes out the window.
"I don't know the circumstances [of Christine Fairweather's death] but I could guess [whoever] did that might have been under the influence of alcohol," Lambie says.
"They wouldn't have thought someone would be coming up the road at 80km an hour and might not see it.
"They would never have thought, doing this, someone might come along and it could have bad consequences."
Missing the Mark
July 2014
A prank by Ohau farmer Kyle Blenkhorn went wrong when he threw a lump of hard clay, intending for it to land in a dam and splash Horowhenua College student Darren Bryant. Instead the clay hit Bryant on the head, knocking him unconscious. The injured teenager was rushed to hospital where neurosurgeons performed emergency surgery, lifting the scalp, repairing the broken bone and inserting a 6cm titanium plate.
December 2012
Australian radio hosts Michael Christian and Mel Greig called the hospital in London where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated during her pregnancy. Nurse Jacintha Saldanha was duped and later took her own life.
June 2012
A disgruntled designer at DDB lost his job after he light-heartedly drew a lewd image of male genitalia on a photo of the boss' teenaged daughter. The photo was included in a commemorative booklet for the teenager, who was captain of Diocesan School's rowing team. The booklet was printed and distributed to parents and friends.
March 2012
Justin Bieber, right, teased fans by posting a random phone number with the final digit missing, hinting it was his personal line and writing, "Call me right now". Two households were bombarded with calls as fans tried to guess the missing digit and the unwitting victims threatened to take legal action against Bieber.
June 2008
A woman was airlifted to Dunedin Hospital with burns to her face and body after a prank at a Brass Monkey Rally in Central Otago. The 30-year-old was standing next to a drum of burning wood when someone threw in petrol.
January 2008
Three men left a "dry ice bottle bomb" in the Christchurch Bus Exchange as a joke and laughed when they saw a cleaner pick it up and carry it away. The bomb exploded, leaving cleaner Brian Chambers, 53, with a cut hand and head injuries. He still suffers from headaches and ringing ears.
December 2000
Gareth MacFadyen, 24, died after a colleague set fire to his grass skirt while he was in a toilet cubicle during a Christmas party in Auckland. Matthew Schofield was jailed for two years for manslaughter.
Deborah Russell made the comments in select committee this morning.