ROUND LAKE HEIGHTS, Ill. — Three students were recovering from injuries after lightning struck at their school bus stop on Thursday morning.
The incident occurred around 7:15 a.m. in Round Lake Heights, which is in northeast Illinois near the border with Wisconsin. Lake Villa Community Consolidated School District 41 reported on its Facebook page that morning that there had been a lightning strike at a school bus stop, and three students were taken to the hospital. Other students who were at the bus stop were transported to school.
About three hours after the lightning strike, the district posted an update on the students who had been hospitalized: “All three students are alert, communicative, and in stable condition.”
According to ABC7, authorities believe that the lightning struck nearby and traveled to where the children were standing, which was under a tree.
"I heard thunder, and then the next thing I know I'm lying on the ground," Carrington Monk, 13, told ABC7 from her hospital bed. "Kids are running back home getting parents, parents are coming over to check on me and two other girls."
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that when emergency responders arrived, they found three middle-school students on the ground. Other students at the school bus stop had reportedly run away and taken shelter inside houses.
Alex Barbour, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for Lake Villa School District 41, told the Daily Herald that the district educates students on weather-related safety.
"I'm not sure if there is anything we as a district could have done differently to avoid this from happening," Barbour told the Daily Herald.
