A beloved father has been identified as the man who died after he was struck by lightning while walking across a gas station parking lot in Wisconsin, his family said.
Peter Garamone Sr., 41, was fatally struck by a lightning bolt on Wednesday evening at a Kwik Trip gas station in Waukesha, according to police.
Garamone worked as a long haul trucker for JB Hunt and had just exited the gas station when he was hit by the bolt, his heartbroken father, Jim Garamone, wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday.
‘I don’t really know how to say this, but our older son — Peter Paul Garamone Sr. — was hit by lightning while hauling goods in Wisconsin last night. He is dead at 41.
‘I keep hoping I will wake up and find this is a bad dream, but I know it isn’t. This is a lesson to all of us to hug those we love a bit tighter,’ Jim wrote in the emotional post.
Garamone leaves behind his wife Lisa and their son Peter Jr.
His father just celebrated his 72nd birthday and completed chemotherapy and radiation treatments for esophageal cancer, Jim shared just days ago.
A witness called 911 around 7.45pm, reporting that a man was down and they were ‘unsure if he was breathing,’ the Waukesha Police Department said.
The victim also called first responders when it happened, CBS 58 reported.
Police said that witnesses, as well as physical evidence at the scene ‘were consistent with a lighting strike’.
Medics found Garamone unresponsive and took him to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
His death comes as a number of tornadoes and grapefruit-sized hail have battered the Midwest in recent days.
At the time of the incident, the area was experiencing heavy rainfall, thunder and lightning.
Beau Snowden, a local who lives near the gas station, told the outlet he heard the lightning strike.
‘We could feel it through the whole house right over there, right up University Drive. It was the loudest thunderbolt we ever heard.
‘It could have been any of us going to the gas station. It’s terrible. You got to watch out for these storms. It’s real dangerous,’ Snowden said.
The Daily Mail contacted the Waukesha Police Department and the Waukesha County Medical Examiner for comment.
Severe thunderstorms started tearing through Wisconsin, Iowa, and Kansas on Tuesday night.
When lightning strikes a human, it immediately damages the cardiovascular and nervous systems.
About 90 percent of victims survive, but are known to suffer life-long injuries and disabilities as a result, according to University Hospitals.
This is the first fatal lightning strike in the US this year and the second fatality in Wisconsin in the last seven months.
The incident comes just weeks after a beloved Florida middle school teacher described his experience after being struck by lightning.
James Fernandez, 42, was on a mountain biking trip to Peru in December 2025 when he and his friend Yuri Botelho, 36, were struck by a bolt from the sky.
The friends were on a guided downhill excursion high in the Andes when a sudden storm rolled in out of clear skies.
Botelho was killed instantly, while Fernandez was thrown fifteen feet from his bike.
Fernandez woke on the ground unable to move and told his tour guide, who had frozen in panic, to get help.
Fernandez survived, but the impact and resulting crash left him with catastrophic spinal cord damage and multiple neck fractures, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.
‘This is where I’m at right now. It could change. I hope it changes. But if it doesn’t, I have to accept and find ways to keep living, right?’ he told the Tampa Bay Times.
