Dog Electrocuted After Stepping On Electric Box In Road

SARASOTA, FL – A week after the death of her Great Pyrenees puppy, Charlie, Debbie McDermott of Sarasota still breaks down when she talks about him.

“I know it sounds weird but I keep finding his fur around the house and I don’t want to vacuum because it’s all I have left of him,” said McDermott.

Nor will she clean the window Charlie loved to look out. He left behind a nose print in the shape of a heart that McDermott can’t conceive of wiping off.

She said she has nightmares about the way Charlie died and wants someone to give her an explanation.

Newly married, she and her husband, Lynn McDermott, purchased Charlie from a breeder in West Palm Beach on Mother’s Day.

A cuddly ball of fur, the Pyrenees puppy had a spot in the shape of a heart on the top of his head

That little fur heart sealed the deal for McDermott. “I fell in love with him,” she said.

Four months later, at just 6 months old, the friendly, people-loving pup weighed 71 pounds. Great Pyrenees are among the largest breed of dogs. When fully grown, Charlie most likely would have weighed 130 pounds.

But there wasn't an intimidating bone in his body, said McDermott.

"I couldn't go anywhere without people coming over to pet him and hug him," she said. "Wherever he went, Charlie brought people together. He was very special."

Such was the case on Saturday, Sept. 22, when Lynn McDermott decided to take Charlie for a walk during a break in the rain that had been pouring throughout the day.

As they were walking down Dade Avenue near Fruitville Road, Charlie stepped on an electrical pull box, a metal box used to house the wiring for street lights.

Pull boxes are commonly inserted into municipal streets to give electric companies easy access to replace wiring.

That single step proved to be a death sentence for the good-natured dog.

Right after stepping on the wet lid with his wet paw, Charlie collapsed.

“He just fell to the ground and started foaming at the mouth,” said Lynn McDermott.

Realizing the dog had gotten a shock from the pull box, Lynn McDermott moved Charlie off the box and got a shock in the process.

He called for his wife and she came running.

“I tried to do CPR but I couldn't save him,” Debbie McDermott said.

Firefighters arrived. They put an oxygen mask on Charlie's face and began doing chest compressions but it was too late for Charlie. He died on the street where he loved to walk.

Sarasota Public Works Director Doug Jeffcoat sent out employees to inspect the pull box. They discovered the metal lid had become electrified because a faulty wire had come in contact with it.

According to Florida Power & Light spokesman Richard Beltran, FPL promptly turned off the power to the streetlight and put up barriers to keep the public away when it heard about what happened to Charlie.

But, he said, the city owns the pull boxes (FPL refers to them as hand holes) and is responsible for their maintenance.

"All we do is provide the energy for the street lights," he said.

Nevertheless, he said FPL is working with the city on ways to upgrade their pull boxes. FPL, for example, uses lids on its pull boxes that aren't metal so they don't conduct electricity, he said.

In the meantime, Jeffcoat said he’s requested an inspection of other pull boxes in the city to make sure the wiring is intact and the boxes aren't a danger.

McDermott said the city called her with its condolences but she wants more. She wants action taken to prevent this.

“People I’ve talked to can’t comprehend how this happened,” said Debbie McDermott. “We’ve walked over that box dozens of times before. No one ever told us we could be electrocuted. What if this had been a child?”

Or her husband. McDermott said it was just a fluke that Charlie, not Lynn, had stepped on the box.

“Maybe that was Charlie’s purpose during his short time on earth,” she said. “Maybe he was put into our lives to save Lynn. And, by telling his story, maybe we can save other lives. I guess that makes Charlie a hero.”

While electrocution from a pull box is rare, it does happen.

In 2003, Rebecca Longhoffer, a 39-year-old tourist from Louisville, Kentucky, was walking down the Las Vegas Strip when she stepped on a pull box just after it had rained.

Like Lynn McDermott, pedestrians on the scene said they received electrical shocks when they tried to pull Longhoffer off the box.

The city’s public works department told the Las Vegas Sun that it didn’t have the funds to regularly check all of the city’s pull boxes for faulty wires. According to the Sun, one official added that people should know better than to walk on an electric box when there are puddles in the street.

Con Ed workers won’t quite so glib when 30-year-old doctoral student Jodie Lane was electrocuted when she stepped on a slush-covered pull box in her East Village New York City neighborhood in 2004.

A police officer who arrived on the scene tried to touch Lane and received an electric shock.

Con Ed concluded that one of the wires in the box had shorted out because slush seeped through the lid of the box. That box is among 250,000 pull boxes on the streets of New York City.

If this has happened before, McDermott asked why residents aren’t warned to keep away from the boxes when it rains.

Until Charlie died, McDermott said she didn’t know there were electrical wires bundled in the metal boxes throughout the streets of Sarasota.

“At the least, why aren’t they marked ‘Danger?’” she asked.

While the metal lids of pull boxes are routinely embossed with the words, “Street Lighting” or “Traffic Lights,” they rarely include a warning to residents.

Images via Debbie and Lynn McDermott

Pull box cover by Shutterstock