Florida teenager alive after rare incident
Daniel Sharkey, a 17-year-old from Altamonte Springs, Florida, is lucky to be alive. He survived a lightning strike while gardening on Monday.
A Florida teenager defied the odds twice on Monday: Not only was he struck by lightning during a storm, but he also survived the near-fatal incident, according to multiple reports.
Daniel Sharkey, 17, was weeding his neighbor’s yard in Altamonte Springs, Florida, to avoid the approaching storm, he told WESH from his hospital bed.
“I was just about to finish. I was just about to go back to my truck when all of a sudden I woke up face down in a puddle,” Sharkey said, according to the Daytona Beach, Florida-based television station.
The lightning “went straight through a tree,” Sharkley said, according to ClickOrlando.
After Sharkey was hit, neighbors came and helped him get up, WESH said.
“There was no warning,” the teenager said of the lightning strike, according to the television station. “There was no ‘get out of the way.’ It just happened instantly.”
USA TODAY tried unsuccessfully to contact Sharkey.
‘I am happy’
Sharkey may have survived only because the lightning didn’t hit him directly, but was close enough to bring the teen down, witnesses told WESH. The tree near him wasn’t so lucky, as it took the brunt of the lightning strike, FOX 5 reported.
“If it had been a direct hit, I probably wouldn’t be here today. I was lucky the tree was there,” he told FOX 5.
Sharkey was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center, where his family and friends will remain by his side during his recovery.
“You never expect something as crazy as a lightning strike,” Sharkey told ClickOrlando. “When I first came to, I thought maybe I had passed out because of the heat or something, but then I thought, ‘Things aren’t adding up. Everything hurts.’ I couldn’t really feel my extremities at that point. I couldn’t speak.”
After his release from the hospital, Sharkey plans to build a few more lawn mowers to earn some extra money during the summer.
“I mean, I have 20 people expecting me to get their lawn mowed, and if that doesn’t happen, I’m sure I’m going to have a lot of angry customers,” he said, according to WESH.
What were the chances that Sharkey was struck by lightning?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the chance of being struck by lightning in a given year is less than one in a million.
Although the likelihood of being struck is low, about 40 million lightning strikes hit the ground in the United States each year, the CDC said. Being struck multiple times is even rarer, with the record being seven lightning strikes in a lifetime, the health agency added.
Florida is considered the “lightning capital” of the USA. According to the CDC, there have been more than 2,000 lightning accidents there in the last 50 years.
From 2006 to 2021, 444 people were killed by lightning strikes in the United States, the CDC said. Men are four times more likely to be struck by lightning than women, the agency added.
According to the CDC, the average age of a person struck by lightning is 37 years.
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