Prison employees acted quickly to save multiple men struck by lightning at Grafton Correctional Institution during a powerful summer storm on Aug. 11, according to newly released documents.
The rain started to let up around 5:20 p.m., allowing men incarcerated to walk outside from the dining hall to their dorms, but in a flash, lightning struck the ground and hit 16 prisoners
. The prison is in Lorain County.Case manager Jacob Tolley saw the flash from his office window and saw several men laying on the ground. He ran outside to start helping the injured, checking for pulses.
One man was unconscious and bleeding from the head. Another was semi-conscious and a third was unconscious.
Within minutes, two of them stopped breathing and had no pulse.
With rain coming down, officers performed chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitations. Three nurses rushed to the yard.
Nurses Kyle Price and London Barber pulled a burnt shirt off a man to hook up an automatic defibrillator and perform CPR.
Lt. Harrison Jackson, Jr., shouted at other prisoners to get back inside the chow hall.
Price got a pulse on his patient and pivoted to bandaging the forehead of another man, keeping pressure on the bleeding wound.
Some incarcerated men comforted the injured.
Barber tried to encourage the patients to respond, telling one man: Please talk to me, you have so much to live for, please squeeze my hand.
Officers called for five ambulances and a life-flight helicopter. Sixteen prisoners were taken to hospitals, including Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus and MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland; three others declined treatment.
As of Aug. 13, a dozen men returned to the prison while four remain hospitalized in stable condition.
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction is conducting a review of the incident.
State government reporter Laura Bischoff can be reached at lbischoff@usatodayco.com and @lbischoff on X.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Nurses, officers save multiple Ohio prisoners struck by lightning
