Overview
- Witnesses heard a nearby lightning strike and found a man unresponsive on a walking path behind a hotel on Bloom Street, and bystanders performed CPR before he was taken to Celebration Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
- The victim has been identified as 20-year-old Matthew Eric Jenkins of Shelby Township, Michigan, who had moved to Central Florida the week before to begin the Disney College Program and whose family has expressed gratitude to those who tried to help.
- Osceola County detectives have opened an investigation and are awaiting the medical examiner’s ruling to determine the official cause of death.
- One outlet reported that hospital documents noted apparent lightning exit wounds on Jenkins’s feet, but that detail has not been confirmed by the sheriff’s office or the medical examiner and remains unverified.
- Jenkins’s death adds to a string of lightning fatalities in Florida this year and highlights the state’s outsized share of U.S. lightning deaths, a pattern officials say underscores the need for public lightning-safety precautions.