Two young Michigan brothers are in the hospital after one of them grabbed a downed power line outside their school and then was himself grabbed by the other boy.The brothers had walked to school around 9 a.m. Tuesday, apparently unaware that classes had been canceled in the aftermath of an overnight storm. High winds had downed wires in their city of Warren and neighboring areas, leaving more than 400,000 customers without power, city officials said.
“They saw the boy grab the wire and saw that he was burning and immediately grabbed him and his brother, put them in their patrol car and took them to Ascension St. John [Hospital],” about 6 miles away in Detroit, Warren Police Commissioner William Dwyer said. The older boy is in stable condition at Ascension St. John Hospital. The younger was taken to Children’s Hospital of Michigan, also in Detroit.
“The younger brother went through the caution tape and grabbed a wire that was hanging at about five feet and tried to lift the wire up over his head and received a jolt,” Warren Fire Commissioner Wilbert “Skip” McAdams said. “His older brother hit him with his backpack and was attempting to pull his brother away from the wire when the police came and removed the child from the wire.”