TORONTO — A 26-year-old mother saw clouds gathering and was headed home when she, her young son and his playmate were struck by lightning in a soccer field, the distraught woman’s husband said Thursday.
“I wish it happened to me instead of him,” Oral Caines said outside the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, where he has been by his five-year-old son Kyus’ bedside.
“It’s tough seeing him like that.”
Little Kyus remained in critical condition Thursday after the lightning strike Wednesday and is drifting in and out of consciousness, his father said.
The boy’s mother, Dulce Caines, is in Brampton Civic Hospital in fair but stable condition.
A spokeswoman said a three-year-old boy who was also rushed to the Hospital for Sick Children was improving Thursday, as his condition was upgraded from critical, which means death may be imminent, to serious, which means he is acutely ill but may improve.
Dulce Caines, Kyus, her four-year-old son and a babysitter with the three-year-old boy and another child were in a park Wednesday under what witnesses described as cloudy but not ominous skies, when they were struck by lightning.
Oral Caines said they saw clouds moving in and had just turned to go home when out of nowhere a lightning bolt witnesses described as a “fireball” hurtled to the ground.
He believes his son was directly hit by the lightning and the other two were injured more indirectly.
People in nearby homes ran to the field and administered CPR to the two little boys, but said there were no signs of life.
Kyus’ little brother and the others were not injured.