By Patrick Stephen Tokpah
/BONG
What appears to be a calamity took place in Gbartala Community , Yellequelleh District 5, Bong County, when a lightning struck on the night of Monday, March 24, 2025, leaving an 18-year-old girl identified as Christiana Cooper, dead.
Harris Jarqueh, uncle of the deceased, told the Inquirer that the incident happened following a heavy downpour of rain on Monday night, when Christiana was in her room with her boyfriend Peter Sackie, aged 22, when the lightning struck and killed her.
He emphasized that the deceased had lived in Gbartala with her parents and survived by making farms before her untimely demise.
Jarqueh further revealed that an incident of such is the first to be observed in the town and has instilled heightened level of fear in residents of Gbartala.
Meanwhile, following the incident, a fifteen-man team of empanelled jurors was instituted to examine the physical body to know the severity of the disaster. The jurors’ report clarified that Christiana died as a result of the lightning strike.
The lifeless body of Christiana Cooper was turned over to her family for interment in the County.
Moreover, the boyfriend of the deceased was affected by the lightning strike, but he sought treatment at a local health facility in the County.
A lightning strike or lightning bolt is a lightning event in which an electric discharge takes place between the atmosphere and the ground.
Most lightning strikes originate in a cumulonimbus cloud and terminate on the ground, called cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning.
A less common type of strike, ground-to-cloud (GC) lightning, is upward-propagating lightning initiated from a tall grounded object and reaching into the clouds. About 25% of all lightning events worldwide are strikes between the atmosphere and earth-bound objects.
