"They were small little half-pint bottles, so we thought it was going to be easy," said James Ybarra, a fellow contestant who stopped after drinking five bottles. After he quit, the remaining contestants, including Ms Strange, were given even bigger bottles to drink, Mr Ybarra said.

Ms. Strange was trying to secure the Wii game console for her children.

“I was talking to her and she was a nice lady,�? James Ybarra, a told the A.P. “She was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for kids.�?

She left behind a husband, two sons and a daughter. Jennifer Strange’s mother found her daughter’s body at her home Friday in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova, California, after Strange called her supervisor at her job to say she was heading home in terrible pain.

“She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad,�? said Laura Rios, one of Strange’s coworkers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento. “She was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her.�?

Sacramento County's assistant coroner, Ed Smith, said an investigation had found evidence "consistent with a water intoxication death".

Water intoxication - also known as hyponatremia - is more commonly seen among athletes, usually extreme athletes, although it can happen to anyone who fails to recognize that they are consuming too much water for their body to regulate, causing a critical loss of sodium.