Lightning hits Scouts, kills leader

FRESNO, Calif. — Lightning struck a group of Boy Scouts taking shelter from a storm, killing the troop leader and leaving a 13-year-old boy brain-dead in the latest tragedy to befall the organization this week, authorities and the teen's grandfather said.

Six others were injured when the lightning bolt made a direct strike on a tarp the Scouts had set up in a meadow in Sequoia National Park on Thursday.

Ryan Collins, 13, was being kept on a ventilator so that his organs could be donated, the boy's grandfather said Friday. Collins was listed in critical condition at the University Medical Center in Fresno, but his family had given up hope.

"He would never recover or anything else," grandfather Bill Collins said.

The lightning strike came just days after four Scout leaders were electrocuted while putting up a tent at the National Scout Jamboree in Virginia. Dozens of Scouts were sickened by the stifling heat two days later at the jamboree.

In addition, a 14-year-old Ogden Boy Scout, Zachary Jones, was lost for 19 hours in the Green River Lakes area of Wyoming's Bridger-Teton National Forest. He was missing overnight and, having caught a fish, was cleaning it when he was found Thursday.

At least one of the injured in the lightning strike was kept alive only because the troop managed to administer CPR for an hour, park ranger Alex Picavet said. It is not known which injured person that was.

"That's amazing," Picavet said.

"It's very difficult. It's probably because of their Boy Scout training."

The assistant Scoutmaster, Steve McCullagh, 29, was killed instantly when the bolt struck, the Tulare County coroner's office said.

"He didn't even make it off the mountain," said Sue Collins, the boy's mother, crying along with her husband and younger son at the hospital. "It's horrible. It's a fluke."

One troop member was being kept for observation at the Fresno hospital, and all the others were treated and released from another hospital, authorities said.

The Scout group from St. Helena, which included five adults and seven teenage Scouts, had been camping for a week as part of a nine-day backcountry hike along the John Muir Trail.

A lightning bolt made a direct strike on one of two tarps they had set up in a meadow. Two teenagers ran 25 minutes to a ranger station after the strike, and five helicopters flew in to evacuate the group.

"They did the best they could in the situation they were in," Picavet said. "They didn't have metal poles, and stayed away from high points."

Collins said his grandson was a Scout for more than three years and loved the outdoors.

"He was a fabulous boy. He was doing what he loved to do," Collins said. "It's just a tremendous shock to everybody."