Strangers huddled together under a tree. Then lightning struck.

All day long, the tall, leafy tree had been a source of shade and comfort for Amber Escudero-Kontostathis.

Amid 90-some degree heat, she’d spent hours canvassing tourists in front of the White House for donations to help refugees in Ukraine, her family said. As she finished her shift on Thursday last week, a storm gathered overhead, thickening with clouds, rain and thunder.

That Thursday happened to be her 28th birthday, her family said. So while Amber waited for her husband to pick her up for a celebratory dinner, she sought shelter once again from the same tree, huddling with three others under its outstretched branches, according to her family and authorities.

One was Brooks Lambertson, a young and rising bank vice president from Los Angeles. There was Donna Mueller, 75, a retired teacher, and her husband James Mueller, 76, who came from Wisconsin to Washington to celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary. And there was Amber, a young woman from California whose travels in the Middle East teaching English had kindled a desire to help those stricken by war and poverty in that region.

They were strangers brought to that precise spot on the east side of Lafayette Square, at that precise moment for different reasons — business, vacation, a passion to help.

Just before 7 p.m., it was at that spot — under a leafy tree about 100 feet from a statue of President Andrew Jackson — that lightning struck.

free tiktok followers generator
free tiktok followers generator
free tiktok followers generator
free tiktok followers generator
free robux generator
free robux generator
free robux generator
free robux generator
free v bucks generator
free v bucks generator
free skins generator
free skins generator
cash app money generator
cash app money generator
cash app money generator
cash app money generator

Experts recorded a lightning flash in the area as six individual surges of electricity that hit the same point in the space of half a second. If the electricity struck the tree first, experts said, it would have sent hundreds of millions of volts coursing through it before passing into and over the bodies of those gathered beneath it.

“It shook the whole area,” an eyewitness later recounted. “Literally like a bomb went off, that’s how it sounded.”

The strike left all four grievously wounded. Secret Service and U.S. Park Police — who keep the park in front of the White House under constant patrol — ran to help.