A lightning strike shattered a roof tile at a northwest Miami-Dade home, while Hailey Schafer, who had been standing nearby, escaped injury. Surveillance video captured the flash and sparks.
WSVN reported that the strike happened around dinner time Tuesday as Armando Latour pulled his Jeep into the driveway. Schafer was waiting under the roof to walk him inside when the storm hit, according to WSVN.
Schafer told the station she saw sparks nearby and tried to get inside. “I see sparks flying next to me,” she said. She believed the roof kept the bolt from striking her directly.
Video and Damage Show How Close the Strike Came
Footage shown in WSVN's report captures the strike from one camera; a second camera cuts to black at the moment of impact. Latour told the station he was only feet away and that the bolt hit where Schafer had been standing.
WSVN reported that the lightning shattered and charred one roof tile.
Florida's Reputation as a Lightning Hotspot
The scare in northwest Miami-Dade adds to a string of recent lightning incidents across South Florida. A Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office deputy was released from the hospital nearly a day after lightning struck his parked cruiser while he sat inside it during an off-duty assignment near the Doral headquarters for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, per WSVN. He was taken to HCA Florida Kendall Hospital following that strike.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue spokesperson Erika Benitez has said Florida is considered the lightning capital of the country and ranks among the states with the most reported lightning deaths and injuries. She has advised that the safest place to be when a storm is nearby is inside a building or a fully enclosed hard-top vehicle.
Other close calls have turned deadly. Charter captain Richard Stanczyk of Stanz Fishing was struck while in a boat off Islamorada on Aug. 20, and three days later, 31-year-old Kenya Glasgow and her 2-year-old daughter were killed by lightning while getting out of an SUV in a Margate neighborhood, WSVN has reported. In 2022, fire crews also had to put out a roof fire after lightning struck a home in southwest Miami-Dade.
What Officials Recommend During Storms
Miami-Dade County's inclement-weather safety guidance points residents to the 30-30 rule: if 30 seconds or less pass between seeing a lightning flash and hearing the thunder that follows, people should seek shelter immediately because the storm is close enough to be dangerous, according to the Miami-Dade County page on the topic. The county's separate lightning safety page notes that Florida leads the nation in lightning deaths and injuries by what it calls a landslide, citing the field of keraunomedicine, the medical study of lightning casualties, as detailed on the county's lightning safety page.
What the Available Lightning Count Shows
The National Weather Service’s preliminary count listed 20 direct lightning fatalities in the United States in 2025 as of July 31. That is a national figure, not a Florida or Miami-Dade total, and it covers direct fatalities rather than injuries; the agency noted the preliminary data may not represent all fatalities to date, according to the National Weather Service.
For Schafer, the warnings are no longer abstract. She walked away from Tuesday's strike shaken but unharmed, with a scorched roof tile as the only lasting mark of just how close the bolt came.
