Road builder Nikolai Tyukin was almost not injured after being struck by lightning on the highway near Penza. He himself believes that his pectoral cross saved him, which "took the lightning over the body," RIA Novosti reports.
The man told the agency that on the day of the incident he was working with colleagues on the road. Closer to 15.00 Moscow time, a thunderstorm began to gather, and they gathered to hide from the rain in a work bus. On the way to him in Tyukina, lightning struck.
“People came up to me, they saw a trace of a cross, they started looking around me, but neither the chain, nor the cross, nor all the metal fasteners from my clothes - all this scattered and disappeared. The clothes were torn to shreds and burned,”he said.
The road worker admitted that he did not remember what had happened, he had not even seen a bright flash. He woke up already at the entrance to the hospital in an ambulance. Doctors placed him in intensive care, where he spent two days. Then he was transferred to the general ward, since he had no internal injuries - the blow fell in the back of the head.
According to him, he escaped death thanks to a chain with a cross around his neck, as his electrician relative told him. “The lightning did not go inside the body, that is, it did not touch the organs, but went along a chain with a cross over the body,” explained Tyukin, who celebrated his 30th birthday on June 6.
He added that after the blow from the chain and the cross, a white mark remained on the chest, and the marks remained on the right leg and foot. He has no other damage.