A Florida teenager was left writhing in pain and unable to scream out for help after he was struck by lightning while cutting grass this week, dramatic video shows.
Daniel Sharkey, 17, was trimming his neighbor’s lawn in Seminole County outside of Orlando on Monday afternoon when he noticed ominous clouds rolling in from the distance, he told News 6.
He thought he had plenty of time before the storm would reach him.
“I was just trying to wrap up before I headed out, so it was only a few minutes,” he told the outlet from a hospital bed.
“I felt like I had 10 to 20 minutes before everything started and it was just, like, ‘Bam!’”
The lightning strike knocked him out cold, Sharkey said. He awoke a short time later on the ground, unable to move or cry out for help.
Security footage after the strike shows the teenager flailing in pain on the sidewalk with his lawn equipment next to him as neighbors ran over.
“The next thing I know I wake up face down in a puddle, and I’m trying to scream but I’m incapable of screaming,” he said. “I was rolling around, just waiting for someone to find me. And I’m sure this only took seconds, but it felt like an eternity.”
He said he wasn’t even sure what had happened as he regained consciousness.
“When I first came to, I thought I might have passed out from the heat or something, but then I was like, ‘Things don’t line up. Everything hurts.’ I couldn’t really feel my extremities at that time. I couldn’t talk,” Sharkey said.
His family provided a photo showing lightning strike marks on his arm.
Sharkey is known in his community for his charity work “Cans Over Candy,” an annual initiative where he collects canned goods from neighbors on Halloween for his local food bank.