WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina | Oregon boy survives lighting strike, credits "guardian angel"

Oregon boy survives lighting strike, credits "guardian angel"

(Oregon) Nov. 25, 2004 - As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving weekend, an Oregon teenager has a lot to be thankful for. 

The Core family underwent an event that changed their lives on August 17th, 1995. Christian, 11, was at a football practice on the field of Gresham Centennial Middle School.

The gray skies had just cleared and Christian's father Richard was watching his son practice.

Richard Core remembers that day, "I heard this weird sound. It sounded like a jet. All I could see was this big round ball of light. And I heard this rolling kind of a sound. And then a boom."

Christian had been hit by a bolt of lightning, his body almost blown apart. Richard and another man began CPR, but it wasn't working. Christian wasn't getting air.

His father spoke to Christian, "I was calling out for him, not to leave. And I remember I was asking God to save his life."

People were stunned, dazed, and confused, and the paramedics had not yet arrived. But there was someone else standing over Richard that day.

In the middle of confusion while trying to save his son, a Spanish woman appeared next to Richard. Richard says she helped with motioned instructions, "She said, she pointed at his stomach and was motioning that his stomach was getting bigger."

She was miming breathing. Though Richard and the other men didn't know Spanish, they understood her life-saving instruction, and cleared an obstruction in Christian's throat.

After the obstruction was cleared, Richard says, "We started seeing that he was getting actual air into his lungs." He says after that the woman vanished.

By the time paramedics had him in the ambulance Christian had a pulse and was breathing again.

Christian has battled back from his near death experience. In the last nine years, he has had to learn how to walk, speak, talk, and eat all over again.

But he says on the day lightning hit him, in a way he was reborn. There is no doubt in his mind, he knows who was kneeling over him that day, "My guardian angel. It's like my dad said, without her I might not be here today. So I think, I thank her for being there. And I know that it's a few years late, but I think that she was there for a reason."

Posted 11:35pm by Chantelle Janelle