"Everything froze", says a woman struck by lightning on June 27 at Lake Murray

One woman, “lucky to be alive”, recounted her experience following Tuesday's lightning strike that injured her and others at Lake Murray.

Officials said 20 people were assessed at the scene of the strike on Tuesday, which happened in the area of Dominion Energy’s public beach along the lake.

The Irmo Fire District said the bolt energized metal lines holding buoys in the water around the swimming area. Several people reportedly swam out to the buoys and were holding onto the cable when the lightning struck.

“I was taken aback,” said Tagen Billiot. “It took me a second once we got off the ground like holy cow, something happened.”

Billiot said the blue skies and hot sun drew her and her family out to Lake Murray on Tuesday. But hours after they arrived, the unthinkable happened.

“All of a sudden it was just loud,” she said. “[It] just was like a very loud crash. Your ears rang and this numbing feeling and then its like ‘Holy moly, what happened?’

Sharp pains then ran through Billiot’s body, and she knew something wasn’t right.

“Everything froze, it felt like the earth completely stopped,” she said.

Billiot said getting out of the water was chaos, with children screaming and parents running as uncertainty loomed overhead. What she knew for certain, however, was that she needed to be seen by a doctor.

She was then taken to the nearest hospital by an ambulance.

“I start throwing up, I’m like ‘something is wrong. I really need something.’ I was buckled in and then all I heard was ‘We are 10 minutes ETA’ and then it all went black, it was all black.”

Billiot said she woke up in the hospital after hours of testing. She even needed to stay overnight after having no feeling on the left side of her body.

“It was very scary to know that I couldn’t feel my body,” she said. “My first thought was, ‘Am I paralyzed? Am I going to be able to feel this again? How am I going to live my life daily?’ How am I going to do things?’ It’s very scary to know that was a possibility.”

Thankfully that possibility didn’t become reality.

Billiot was released from the hospital Wednesday, and now has a different mindset on life.

“I just feel so lucky,” she said. “I just feel so good to know that I am here and I can see my nephews grow up. It just makes me so happy.”

When we asked Dominion Energy about changes at the beach, we got no response.