Detroit Teen Knocks Friend Off Live Power Line

Nov. 18--It was supposed to be like any Monday morning, with students heading to class at the start of a new school week. But at Burns Elementary/Middle School in Detroit, classes had been canceled because of a power outage.

For four boys at the school, the walk home on the unexpected day off turned tragic, with one of them hospitalized Monday after he was shocked by a downed wire near the school.

Police say he may have only survived it because of the quick thinking of Kenneth Gaylor, 13, who used a piece of wood to knock his 14-year-old friend off the live wire as he was being shocked. The school's principal was then able to perform CPR.

"(He) potentially saved the boy's life," Detroit Police Sgt. Michael Woody said of Kenneth. "He's a hero today."

The 14-year-old, whose name was not released, arrived at DMC Sinai-Grace Hospital with a faint pulse, Woody said.

He was transferred Monday evening by helicopter to Mott Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, according to Terry Abbott, a communications officer for the Education Achievement Authority, which operates Burns.

The teen was walking with Kenneth, 13; Kenneth's brother, Charles Gaylor, 12, and Carlos Morgan, 10, just after 8 a.m. They were heading home after they found out classes had been canceled.

A DTE Energy worker was parked in a company vehicle on Lyndon near the school, steering people away from downed wires crossing the street, the boys and Woody said.

But the boys tried to cut through a vacant lot behind the school on Marlowe, one house away from Lyndon, east of Grand River and Greenfield, where the wire also was down.

"We ducked under it, but (the 14-year-old), he's tall, so he had to push the (wire) up ... and that's when he got shocked, started bleeding out his nose and fell to the floor," Kenneth said. "I grabbed a stick and started hitting the cord, and it wouldn't come off his hand -- it was like glued to it. And it finally ... just dropped."

The other boys called for help.

What made him think to use a stick and not push his friend himself?

Kenneth said it was because he saw the stick.

He said his mother, "told me not to touch electrical stuff, so I just knew not to do that."

Abbott said Monday that principal Dwayne Richardson called DTE to report an emergency situation after he spotted the downed wires on his way in at 7:10 a.m.

As he walked with cones to put around the wires, he spotted the teen on the ground. The power line was hanging above the boy. Firefighters warned the principal to stay away because they didn't know whether there was a live wire beneath the teen.

"But the principal said he knew he had to move the student and perform CPR to try to help him," Abbott said in a district news release. "Not knowing whether the student was in contact with another power line, principal Richardson grabbed the student and dragged him from underneath the dangling power line and immediately began performing CPR."

Richardson could not be reached Monday.

Woody said the boy had no pulse when he left the scene but EMS workers detected a faint pulse when they arrived at the hospital.

Carlos' mother, Gwendolyn Gray, 43, said she didn't receive the text normally sent out to parents when school is canceled.

"That little boy didn't even have to walk that way, if they would have let parents know there wasn't school," she said.

Abbott said the EAA notified local TV and radio stations at 5:48 a.m. that the school was closed.

Abbott said he also personally e-mailed media outlets at 6:28 a.m. to say all 15 EAA schools in the city were closed because of power outages.

But the phone system that principals can use to alert parents of closures at individual schools was not activated for Burns Elementary/Middle School, Abbott said.

"I can't tell you at this point why there wasn't a phone call made this morning," Abbott said Monday evening.

The Gaylor boys' mother, Timika Halthon, 38, said she's devastated the accident happened to a boy who plays at her home with her sons nearly every day.

"We pray that (he) recovers and I'm praying for his family," Halthon said. "And I just hope God be with that little boy and heal him."

Joseph White, 49, who has lived in the home on Marlowe next door to the vacant lot since about 1995, said he called about the downed lines Sunday night and again just after 7 a.m. Monday.

"I told him I'm right by a school -- there's a downed wire on my fence," said White, adding that a DTE employee told him "there were 200,000 calls ahead of me."

"I feel sorry for his mother because it has to be hard to send a kid to school and he never comes home," White said. "And I also feel bad for the three little boys with him -- they had to see that. Just as I came out, they were screaming."

DTE spokesman Alejandro Bodipo-Memba said the company is investigating.

"We're trying to get that information now," he said when asked when DTE first learned about the downed wires. "Safety is a huge issue for us, so we're trying to find out what took place to try to prevent that from happening again."

Erica Donerson, a spokeswoman for the utility, said the time the call was received about the downed wire and the time a truck arrived at the scene are all part of DTE's investigation.

She said around 5:15 p.m. Monday that crews were making repairs. Police and fire personnel were also on the scene to secure it, she said.

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