A US woman is currently in intensive care after being struck by lightning at a country music festival on Thursday night.
As Billboard reports, the Country Thunder music festival in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin was rocked by inclement weather on Thursday night, leading to heavy rain and thunder storms throughout the evening. While many took cover from the wind and rains, the wild weather happened to severely affect one attendee who was struck by lightning shortly after midnight.
The victim in question was 22-year-old Brittney Prehn, who was reportedly talking on her phone at the time of the incident. Kayla Byrne, a witness who happened to catch the event on video, explained to a local news station that she rushed to help Prehn, who was unconscious and bleeding from her ear when she was found.
At the time of the incident, the victim did not have any identification on her and was only identified after a family member contacted police asking for information about her daughter’s safety.
“The mother called in,” explained Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth. “She heard about someone who was struck by lightning. She wasn’t able to get a hold of her daughter, her 22-year-old daughter, and the mother called in and by a tattoo, she said that sounds like my daughter.”
As ABC 7 Chicago notes, Prehn was transported to a hospital in her native Illinois for treatment, where she is currently in the Intensive Care Unit.
“It almost appears she was struck while talking on the phone,” explained a worker at the hospital where Brittney Prehn is being treated. “There’s significant damage to the phone that caused the injuries to her face, and the electricity exit was through her foot.”
Sadly, it’s also been reported that Prehn is a distant relative of an 18-year-old man who was also injured in a lightning strike earlier this month during Fourth of July celebrations.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that lightning has affected fans at a music festival, with an uncharacteristically severe incident occurring at Germany’s With Full Force festival back in 2012. This incident “resulted in 51 injuries, three of them landing in the intensive care unit of a nearby hospital.”
Paramedic Kevin Myers, who was called into assist at the Country Thunder festival, explained just how rare such an incident is, and urged others to take care in the future.
“This is definitely a once in a lifetime career kind of call. You don’t normally get people who have lightning strikes and survive or have lightning strikes period,” Myers explained.
“If you’re out someplace where there’s lots of lightning going on, get under a building or something like that, get yourself covered don’t be walking around.”
