Teenager injured by lightning strike released from hospital

SALT LAKE CITY — All young people who were hospitalized after being struck by lightning have now left the hospital.

Fourteen-year-old Kaileigh Saling, the last of the hospitalized teens, was able to go home on Sunday evening.

Kaleigh Saling said the lightning struck just inches from where she was walking.

“I heard this huge bang, my ears started ringing, and I was going up and down at the same time,” said Kaileigh Saling.

The force was so strong that it threw her into the air, Saling said.

“When I was laying on the ground, it felt like I was being enveloped in like a cloud or a pillow,” Kaileigh Saling said. “And they lifted my head and I felt like bricks and gravity were just being thrown at me.”

“She was next to the person holding the umbrella when the lightning struck,” said Rachel Saling, Kaileigh’s mother.

Kaileigh Saling’s mother believes the current flowed through an umbrella held by a teenager walking next to Kaileigh Saling.

“(The umbrella) flew out of his hand,” Kaileigh Saling added.

While the boy with the umbrella also suffered shock, the two teenagers walking next to him, Kaileigh Saling and Bo Chapman, suffered more serious injuries and were flown to the hospital, according to Kaileigh Saling.

“The boy with the umbrella must have been right here because her right side was affected,” Rachel Saling said. “(Bo) was on his other side.”

Kaileigh Saling was initially flown to Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital in Lehi, but was later transferred to the Salt Lake City campus, where her room was next to that of 14-year-old Bo Chapman.

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