WRAL Weather News: Lightning Strike In North Carolina Claims 5-Year-Old Boy [VIDEO]
A family's vacation at Carova Bear on the Outer banks, North Carolina took a tragic turn on Sunday, as a 5-year-old boy died after being struck by lightning.
The incident happened while the family was spending some time on the beach. According to Chief Ralph Melton with Currituck County Fire-EMS, authorities and emergency services were made aware of the incident at about 4:11 p.m. on Sunday.
Officials who responded to the incident have stated that the family had been on the beach when the thunderstorm rolled in. The family, whose names have not been released as of writing, did attempt to take shelter. However, before they got to safety, their 5-year-old boy was struck by lightning.
Upon calling for emergency services, the boy's family promptly placed him on their SUV to meet emergency crews halfway. The family drove south on the beach, ultimately meeting rescue personnel about a mile north of a rental property which is fondly dubbed as "Laughing Gull."
The boy was rushed by paramedics to the Sentara Princess Anne Hospital, a medical facility in Virginia Beach, where he succumbed to his injuries a short time later.
The United States has been battered by lightning strikes more often than usual this year, with the boy's death being the 21st lightning-related fatality for 2016. Among those 21 deaths, 12 of them happened this July.
The thunderstorm that tragically killed the boy did not come out of the blue, however. On that day, popular weather app AccuWeather forecasted that there was a 60 percent chance of thunderstorms in Carova on the day of the incident.
Just last week, a man filming a thunderstorm in New York perfectly captured the moment when a bolt of lightning struck the Empire State Building. The man, Henrik Moltke, stated that incident happened last Monday evening, when he decided to take a video of an ongoing thunderstorm in the New York skyline.
The Empire State Building has always been prone to lightning strikes, with the popular structure being struck about 23 times a year.
