911 call after lightning strike in Davie kills college runner – NBC 6 South Florida

A new 911 call captures the desperate moments after a 19-year-old runner was struck and killed by lightning in a Davie park last month.

Ethan Lawrence was running in Vista View Park on June 30 when he was struck by lightning.

“I think someone got struck by lightning up on the hill. I saw the lightning strike and someone just fell down,” a woman told a 911 operator in the call obtained by NBC6 on Monday. “I was just walking down the path when a big lightning strike and I didn’t see the person get up.”

The caller said she wasn’t entirely sure if he had been hit, given her position at the bottom of the hill.

A family is mourning the loss of a 19-year-old who was believed to have been struck by lightning while jogging in a park in Davie. NBC6’s Ari Odzer reports

“I was driving along the bottom of the hill to leave the park when a massive bolt of lightning struck. I saw a guy walking up the hill and then all of a sudden he was at the bottom,” she said. “It looked like the lightning had struck right on him.”

“It looked so scary and then the person just fell to the ground,” she said later in the phone call.

Lawrence was a star athlete at West Broward High School who attended Jacksonville University on a cross-country scholarship. He transferred to Nova Southeastern University when his girlfriend Andrea Lares had a baby six months ago. Lawrence was training to be a walk-on on NSU’s cross-country team.

“I’m still in shock and still trying to process all of this. As it happened, within seconds of that morning, he texted me, ‘Good morning honey, I woke up late today,'” Lares told NBC6 after the incident. “The last thing he sent me was a picture of his baby.”

“I’m so happy and grateful to have had 19 wonderful years with my son,” said mom Lourdes Lawrence. “We had an unbreakable bond, he would text me every morning in college when I was a sophomore: ‘Good morning mom, I’m on my way to the run with the team,’ ‘Hey mom, I’m back from the run with the team, my legs feel like bricks’ – he would just tell me about his day, Facetime me, call me.”