The teenager, Carlos Ramos, was one of at least seven people on Orchard Beach after lifeguards cleared the water with thunderstorms approaching on a blistering day, officials said.
Six days after celebrating his 13th birthday, a boy died Thursday night after he was struck by lightning in a fast-moving thunderstorm at Orchard Beach in the Bronx.
The boy, Carlos Ramos, was taken to Jacobi Medical Center after being hit and died hours later, officials said. His death came as people were seeking relief from the excessive heat that has left the New York region and other parts of the country sweltering over the past several days.
Carlos, who lived with his mother in New Jersey, was visiting his father in the Bronx, where he grew up. He was one of at least six people who were in a group on the sand when the bolt hit at about 5 p.m. during the swift storm, a spokeswoman for New York City’s parks department said in a statement.
The Police Department reported that there had been six others — two adults and four children — who were hurt in the strike and expected to survive. The children were a 5-year-old boy, a 12-year-old girl, a 13-year-old girl and a teenage boy, the police said, though the Fire Department said earlier that only five additional people had been injured.
On Friday, family, neighbors and friends of Carlos described him as a fun-loving teenager who enjoyed playing basketball and making those around him laugh. He aspired to be a stand-up comedian, they said.
“I am grieving for my son’s loss,” his father, Jeffrey Ramos, said as tears welled up in his eyes during a brief exchange in his apartment building on Friday. “It’s just crazy.”
Mr. Ramos had taken Carlos to the beach, joined by several cousins.
Friends described the Ramos family as festive and close-knit, participating in activities like going fishing and having a barbecue in front of their Bronx building.
The summer outing at Orchard Beach followed a milestone birthday for Carlos and his twin sister, Carla, who turned 13 last Friday.
The twins moved to New Jersey with their mother after they completed fifth grade at Public School 114 in the Bronx, neighbors said.
Faith Johnson, 13, a classmate, neighbor and friend of Carlos, said she had been messaging Carla late on Thursday night about the strike. In social media messages, Carla said that Carlos had been hit particularly hard.
The messages abruptly ceased — and Faith said she heard minutes later that Carlos had died, crying upon receiving the news. She said she went to the lobby of their shared apartment building and saw Carla, who also was weeping.
“I don’t know what it feels like to lose somebody like that,” Faith said on Friday.
Carlos’s sudden, unusual death shook his friends and neighbors.
Jessie Fuglo, 63, said that she lived next door to Carlos and his family and had known them for more than two decades. She said she had come to consider Carlos and his sister as grandchildren.
“I will remember him for the rest of my life,” Ms. Fuglo said.
At the time of the bolt, lifeguards had cleared swimmers from the water, and parks workers had used a loud speaker to urge people to get off the beach, the parks department spokeswoman said. Less than an hour earlier, with the storm bearing down on the area, weather authorities had issued an advisory recommending that those who were outside seek shelter.
The lightning at Orchard Beach was among at least 20 to 25 strikes in the Bronx from about 5:15 to 5:30 p.m., according to a preliminary estimate provided on Thursday by Jim Connolly, a National Weather Service meteorologist in New York.
The turbulent weather was to be expected, Mr. Connolly said, given the heat and humidity that descended on the region this week to create “unstable conditions.”
“This is a recipe for thunderstorm development,” he said.
The storms that brought the lightning developed in central Pennsylvania before moving east, waning slightly as they passed through New Jersey and then regaining strength, with winds gusting up to about 50 miles per hour, Mr. Connolly said.
The force of the storms prompted the Weather Service to issue a Special Weather Statement shortly after 4:30 urging anyone who was outdoors in parts of northern New Jersey, Westchester County and New York City, including the Bronx, to consider going inside.
Estimates differ as to how likely it is that a person will be struck by lightning in a given year. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the odds at about 1 in 500,000. The Weather Service, citing data from 2009 to 2018, puts them at 1 in 1.2 million.
A lightning strike can cause cardiac arrest when it hits, according to the Weather Service, which also notes that some victims “may appear to have a delayed death a few days later” if they are resuscitated but have sustained irreversible brain damage.
Only about one in 10 people who are hit by lightning die; the rest sustain injuries of varying severity while often surviving to tell harrowing tales.
Still, lightning is among the leading causes of weather-related deaths in the United States. From 1989 to 2018, the country averaged 43 reported lightning deaths a year, the Weather Service says. From 2009 to 2018, the figure dropped to 27. The deaths from lightning strikes are most common during the summer months, according to the C.D.C.
As of Aug. 3, lightning had killed six people in the country this year, Weather Service data shows. The first death was in New Jersey in June, when a 70-year-old man was struck on a golf course. Of the others, three were at beaches, one was on a golf course and another was on a hiking trail.
Before Thursday, lightning had injured 17 people in New York City since 2001, according to federal storm data.
One day in August 2018, for instance, three men were struck by lightning and injured, one critically, in Queens. Two were playing soccer in Flushing Meadows Corona Park; the third was standing next to a vehicle at an intersection in Jamaica.
A lightning strike was last known to have killed someone in the city in August 2002, when a 25-year-old man went to the roof of a building on Broome Street in Manhattan to watch thunderstorms, according to the federal storm data.
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