“As soon as I ran over the cable, I felt a shock through the mower itself,” said Will Lancaster. “Kind of felt like sticking your finger in a light socket, is what the jolt felt like … Hands, felt it through my whole body, definitely.”
Lancaster said he didn’t see the wire in the grass, which he admits “was kind of high.”
First, Lancaster called Dayton Power & Light, however, a technician determined it wasn’t theirs. It belonged to AT&T. The line came out of a box with the company’s logo and was strung down the fence line to a power pole.
Lancaster said a customer service representative at AT&T hung up on him. However, an AT&T spokesperson told a NewsCenter 7 reporter that the company sent a crew to look into what happened.
The shocking in Xenia Twp. is the second mower-related incident is as many days in the region.
On Wednesday afternoon, 67-year-old Everett Randy Burns of Lynn, Indiana, was killed after his riding mower overturned on an incline, the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office reported.
Meanwhile, Lancaster has halted mowing the lawn, and said in the future he will be more careful where he mows.
A lawn mower safety expert, Ray Baldwin of William Beck and Sons Inc., says that’s always a good idea.
“If you’re not familiar with what you’re moving, when it comes to high grass or something like that, you should walk it and just kind of see what’s in there.”