Teen survives lightning strike at cabin

BRAINERD, Minnesota -- A 15-year-old was relaxing in his bed listening to a storm pass by when a flash of lightning struck the roof and shot heat and electricity through his entire body, even lighting his bed on fire.

"It still hits me every once in a while that, wow, I got struck by lightning," Corey Wilmer told WCCO-TV.

He says he was lying on his bed when a lightning bolt hit the roof of his bunkhouse, sending a charge through the wall, his bed and him.

"The most odd burning sensation went through my whole body, and the lightning itself lifted me off my bed. And I looked at my bed and it was on fire," Wilmer said.

After dousing it with water, Wilmer ran into the cabin and found his stepdad, who woke up from the explosive sound.

"Then Corey came in and said, 'I just got struck by lightning.' I'm like, 'No, you didn't.' And he was like, 'I had to put out a fire with the water bottle.' I'm like, 'OK, I better go check that out.' And then he took off his shirt. And then I saw the spider marks on his left shoulder. I'm a paramedic and you only see that in textbooks," Edwin Griego, Wilmer's stepfather, said.

Worried about his heart, Wilmer spent half a day in the hospital.

The bunkhouse had its own scars -- a blown-out window, a hole in the roof and cracked siding.

"And then we had debris that was blown out past the cars," Griego said.

"I'm just happy I didn't get the entire strike because the doctors were saying if I would have got the whole bolt, this could have been a completely different story," Wilmer said.