The Nation - News from July 30, 1987

A bolt of lightning struck a group of people in a Chicago Heights, Ill., park, injuring 30 of them, including a woman and a teen-aged girl hospitalized with serious burns, authorities said. The bolt struck just as players and spectators from a basketball tournament were leaving the park by a metal fence gate under a tree, said Shelby Aaron, who was watching from her house across the street. “It hit the tree and bounced off the tree and hit that metal fence. . . . You could see just like streaks of fire hitting the kids,” she said. Most of the injured were released from hospitals after treatment for burns and lacerations.