Cowboy State Daily by Mark Heinz 9/22/2025
The coroner in Conejos County, Colorado, confirmed on Monday that a lightning strike killed two elk hunters who went missing Sept. 11 and were found dead on Thursday.A lightning strike killed two elk hunters who went missing Sept. 11 in southern Colorado were found dead on Thursday, the coroner who investigated the case confirmed Monday afternoon.
Lightning might have stuck a tree that Andrew Porter of Asheville, North Carolina, and Ian Stasko of Salt Lake City, Utah, both 25, were standing under, Conejos County, Colorado Coroner Richard Martin told Cowboy State Daily.
The bodies were found fully clothed and didn’t show any outward signs of trauma, Martin said.
He said determining the cause of death was “a pretty tough case,” because in most instances of fatal lightning strikes, there are entry and/or exit wounds from a massive bolt of electricity.
The tree that Porter and Stasko were apparently standing under also didn’t show any signs of a strike.
Martin said there’s no way of knowing for certain what transpired, but he surmised that the electricity from the bolt that struck the tree likely traveled through the tree, and into the ground.
And then the conductivity through the ground is probably what killed the two men, he said.
It’s likely that the fatal effect was that “all electrical functions” in their bodies were stopped instantly by the massive jolt coming from the lightning, he said.
More:
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/09/22/coroner-lightning-strike-killed-elk-hunters-found-dead-thursday-in-colorado/
