A former paramedic and part-time musician felt more than the shock of good music on Saturday when he was hit by lightning while rehearsing with his band on his carport.
Donald Sargent said that despite the relatively calm skies around 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, a sudden flash of lightning struck a nearby oak tree then shot over and hit a tuning peg on the bass guitar he was holding.
Sargent said he and his band members were sitting on the carport and getting ready to jam when he heard a loud pop and felt pain in his hand and shoulder.
“Something said, ‘POW,’ and went through that $2,000 Marcus Miller bass,” he said. “It hurt my elbow and burned up the pre-amp in that Marcus Miller bass.”
Sargent said just talking about it gave him chills.
“It went through me and hit (guitarist) Justin Taylor sitting behind me and knocked him off the stool. The keyboard player saw it and he didn’t know what to do,” he said.
The lightning hit an oak tree about 75 feet away in a nearby pasture and traveled to the nearest conductor — Sargent’s bass.
Sargent just so happened to be the only one holding an instrument.
He said the strike caused his hand to stay gripped around the neck of the guitar.
“It closed my hand, I couldn’t open it,” he said, adding that it was about 10 seconds before he was able to unclasp his hand from the instrument.
“The guitar was a lightning rod. It lit up,” he said.
Between the scare of a lightning strike and the actual voltage, Sargent began having an irregular heartbeat.
Sargent’s wife came outside after the commotion and his band members were less than positive about the outcome.
“My wife came out and they said, ‘Sarge is dead.’ They thought I was dead,” he said, laughing about it days later. “Then I started moving and they said, ‘He’s alright.’ ”
As unbelievable as it may sound to others, Sargent is just as amazed.
“I lived through that, man,” he said.
Sargent said there was no sign of a storm brewing at the time of the incident, only cloudy skies.
“It just came from nowhere,” he said. “There wasn’t any bad weather anywhere, but it said ‘POW’ and struck that oak tree, then blew the bark off the tree into the pasture.”
Sargent, who now works in the non-emergency transportation department of Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center, said that after working 18 years on the ambulance service for Southwest, he’s aware of what a lightning strike can do to a person.
“I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. We were just trying to rehearse,” he said. “It blew my mind. I thought I was gone.”
Once his heart resumed a normalhythm and he was able to open and close his hand, Sargent said he decided not to go to the hospital.
As thankful as he is for his life, Sargent is equally as thankful that his bass is salvageable, although it needs repairing.
“That was a $2,000 bass, but they make basses every day,” he said. “Man, I love that bass. I’ve got several, but that’s the one.”
After the rare incident, Sargent said one thing is for sure: He plans to watch the weather from now on.
