‘Her shoe exploded off.’ Woman on phone hit by lightning at Country Thunder festival, witnesses say

Brittney Prehn was at the Country Thunder music festival when she was struck by a bolt of lightning, authorities said in a news release.

The 22-year-old Illinois resident was hit at about 12:30 a.m. Friday while at the County Thunder campgrounds in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook.

And authorities believe she was on her phone when she was struck.

“It almost appears she was struck while talking on the phone,” a medic who was working at the hospital told WLS. “There’s significant damage to the phone that caused the injuries to her face.”

Witnesses also told WLS that they saw Prehn on her phone when the jolt of lightning hit her.

Sgt. Mark Malecki told the Kenosha News that burn marks show that the lightning likely entered her body through her ear and exited through one of her feet.

“She had a hole in the side of her head, she had a boot on — a normal boot — and it was blown off of her foot,” witness Thomas Wiskirchen told FOX6. “Her phone was fried and her vape was fried.”

Another witness said he went to look after he heard a “huge lightning bolt.”

“Me and a friend walked out and every cop rushed over there,” Robert Kruse, of Illinois, told TMJ. “Her shoe exploded off, her other shoe was all black and burnt. She had blood coming from her ears.”

Photos obtained by WISN show how her phone and boot were destroyed.

Prehn was unconscious, seriously injured and taken to the Northern Illinois Medical Center for treatment, the sheriff’s office said. That’s about 16 miles south of Twin Lakes.

“This is definitely a once in a lifetime career kind of call,” paramedic Kevin Myers told WISN. “You don’t normally get people who have lightning strikes and survive or have lightning strikes period.”

Marquette University professor Chris Stockdale told the station that holding a phone does not increase your chances of getting struck by lightning. The sheriff’s office told WLS there were no signs that Prehn had done anything wrong or unsafe right before she was hit.

Last week in Tennessee a family said lightning arced off a tree and hit a smartphone in a man’s pocket. The phone was fried, and the father of two daughters was killed.

Last year, 16 people died in the U.S. from lightning, according to the National Weather Service. There have been 15 lightning fatalities so far in 2018. Some of the deaths occurred while people were doing yard work, fishing, playing outside and boating. All of the people were outside when they were struck and killed in 2018.