SUDDEN

Freak Lightning Strike Injures 13

Kills one at Venice Beach.

A 20-year-old man was killed and 13 others were injured when a rare lightning storm struck Los Angeles’ popular Venice Beach on Sunday. “I just saw a big old flash of light right over my head then my hair was tingling, and then there was this huge crash of thunder,” said Giovanni Alonzo, a 14-year-old who was one of the 20,000 beachgoers present when the lightning bolt struck. Bill Patzert, a climatologist with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said a lightning strike in Southern California is relatively rare, about 1 in 7.5 million versus 1 in 600,000 in Florida. “This was a sneak attack that took everybody by surprise,” he said. “Coastal Southern California is virtually lightning-proof. Because it’s so unusual, people are not sensitized to the dangers.”