A public appeal has been launched by law enforcement in Colorado to identify an unidentified young woman who was left critically injured after being struck by lightning on a suburban walking trail earlier this week. The incident unfolded in Superior, a small community located roughly 32 kilometers northwest of Denver, on Thursday evening.
According to local law enforcement officials, a group of bystanders who heard a loud thunderclap connected to the lightning strike went outside to investigate, where they discovered the unresponsive woman. The Good Samaritans immediately initiated cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and continued life-saving efforts until emergency response teams could arrive at the scene. First responders were dispatched to the location at approximately 17:39 local time.
When first responders arrived, the woman had no detectable pulse and was not breathing. After sustained resuscitation work, she eventually regained a weak pulse and began breathing independently, though she remained unconscious. She was quickly airlifted to a major trauma center in Denver for urgent medical care.
As of mid-morning Friday, the patient has stabilized slightly, with a regular heart rate and continued independent breathing, but she remains in critical condition, per an update from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office shared on Facebook. Officials have not been able to confirm her identity, as she was carrying no form of identification when found, and her mobile phone was completely destroyed by the lightning strike. Her fingerprints also do not match any records on file in law enforcement databases.
Law enforcement has released a detailed description of the victim to aid in identification. She is believed to be between 20 and 30 years old, a white woman standing 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighing roughly 54 kilograms, with distinctive red or auburn hair. She has three butterfly tattoos on her upper right arm, and was wearing a green running top, black running shorts with white trim, white or pink running shoes, and a grey or black windbreaker jacket at the time of the strike. No photo of the woman is being released to the public at this time, officials confirmed, as she has sustained significant facial trauma from the strike and does not resemble her typical appearance.
Authorities have already cross-referenced the description with active missing person reports across the region, but have not yet found a matching case. The primary goal of the public appeal is to connect the injured woman with her family members, who can be with her at the hospital as she receives care.
“Obviously, we want to connect her with her loved ones and family, so they can be there at the hospital with her,” said Carrie Haverfield, public information officer for the sheriff’s office, in an interview with the BBC. “So we’re asking the community if they have anyone fitting the description put out, a loved one, family member, who they’ve been unable to get ahold of.”
Haverfield noted that while Superior sits on Colorado’s Front Range, an area of prairie and foothills rather than the high elevation mountain terrain where lightning strikes are more commonly reported, the state as a whole experiences a high volume of lightning activity annually. National Weather Service data estimates that roughly 500,000 lightning strikes hit the ground across Colorado each year. Between 2006 and 2024, the Lightning Safety Council ranks Colorado third in the United States for total lightning-related fatalities, only behind Florida and Texas which claim the top two spots. Nationwide, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that around 40 million lightning strikes hit U.S. ground every year, though the annual odds of an individual being struck remain less than one in a million.
Anyone with information that could help identify the victim is asked to contact the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office immediately.