An 8-year-old girl was killed by a lightning strike while playing in a backyard just feet away from her devastated family members.
Little Kinslee Tschida’s nurse mother desperately tried to give her daughter CPR after the fatal strike in rural Illinois on Friday, July 3 — but the girl later died at the hospital from her injuries, according to Kinslee’s grieving grandfather.
Kinslee was playing on a swing outside with her cousins on Friday when her uncle heard a “rumble” of thunder and told them to get off the swing and come inside the house, only about 20 feet away.
“Kinslee was just climbing off, and all of a sudden, in an instant — I mean, there was no warning … It came right in between the tree,” Chris Scheib, who helped raise the girl, told WGN-TV in an emotional interview.
“In 5 or 10 seconds, she would have been fine,” Scheib told WLS.
Scheib said his other granddaughter was less than four feet away from Kinslee but escaped unscathed, along with other family members who witnessed the lightning strike.
“They did try CPR. My son and my daughter – on her own daughter – and being a nurse, you know she took that real hard. She can’t save her own daughter,” Scheib said.
“Basically, there’s nothing else you could have done.”
Kinslee was taken from the home in Serena to OSF St. Elizabeth Hospital in Ottawa, where she was pronounced dead.
The La Salle County Coroner’s Office told The Post that an autopsy was conducted on Sunday. The official cause of death will be determined in about four to five weeks, the coroner said.
“It’s unfathomable, it’s unrealistic, it’s hard to grasp,” Schieb said.
Kinslee would have been entering the third grade at Rutland Grade School this fall. Her family says she loved to sing, dance and bring joy to those around her, WGN-TV reported.
A GoFundMe was started to help Kinslee’s family cover burial and medical expenses.
“You try to muddle through it, I guess. I never had to deal with this in my life until now, and it’s changed me. I think we’re all broken,” Scheib said.
Kinslee’s death is the fourth lightning fatality in the US so far this year, according to the National Lightning Safety Council.
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