Teen Dies in Freak Electrocution at School

The southeast Michigan middle school student electrocuted when he fell into a fence while playing catch along the sidelines of a football game Tuesday evening has died.

Investigators are still trying to determine why an electric current was running through the fence at the Lincoln High School football stadium in Augusta Township, where eighth grader Christian Lorinczy, 13, had gone to watch his cousin play.

Lincoln Consolidated Schools announced the teen’s death Friday in a notice on the school website, along with a link to a brochure, Helping Your Child Cope with Traumatic Experiences. It said counseling services would be available, and the district’s goal was to keep the routine as normal as possible for students.

The district also said each day has brought investigators – who include the state electrical inspector, master electricians, state police detectives, township fire officials, occupational safety inspectors and others – closer to determining what went wrong. The fence , part of the handicap access to the stadium, shouldn’t have been electrified, school officials said, but a hand-held meter confirmed the current.

A woman who rushed to help Christian after his friends reported seeing him slumped against the fence was also shocked as she reached through the fence to check his pulse, WWJ/CBS Local reports. She was treated at the scene. No other injuries have been reported, but in posts on the Lincoln Consolidated Schools Facebook page, some students at the school said the fence has been delivering shocks for weeks.

“Electricity has been going through that fence for several weeks now,” Haylee Keller posted. “... I was at the varsity game and people were touching it and it would zap/shock them, so it has been there but the electric current has been getting stronger.”

Another student, freshman Justin Herrero, 14, claimed “you could see my bones popping out” after touching the ramp’s safety railing with one hand and the pole with fencing attached to it with the other. He described the sensation as similar to that produced by a game at the popular Chuck-E-Cheese restaurants that challenges kids to hold onto a vibrating handle as long as they can.

Herrero said students didn’t think the issue was serious enough to report to school officials.

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Screenshot: WXYZ video