SAN ANTONIO – What started as a sunny day at Topgolf with friends and family quickly turned into a dangerous situation for San Antonio teen Tomas Gomez.
Gomez, 18, and a group of friends were having a great time at the sports complex earlier this year, on May 28. However, the outing started to take a bad turn in the last 30 minutes of their assigned golf game time when it began to rain.
“I decided to hit one last shot then leave,” Gomez said in a phone interview with KSAT.
He asked his friend, Arlette Ibarra, to start recording on her phone to get his last shot of the game.
In one full swing, Gomez sent his golf ball flying in mid-air at 88 miles per hour and just seconds later, a massive bolt of lightning trickled down the sky and struck the ball.
The sound rang out with a bang, sending Gomez and his friends ducking for cover inside the facility.
“I heard the thunder and my instinct was to run... It was all a blur,” Gomez said. “It could have hit me... it could have hit any of us. It was actually pretty scary after I was thinking about it for a while.”
No one was injured in the incident and everyone was safely evacuated, according to Topgolf.
Despite the terrifying lightning strike, Gomez said it wasn’t going to deter him and his friends from returning to Topgolf.
“Even before this we went to Topgolf and we’ll continue to go after this,” Gomez said.
KSAT has reached out to Topgolf for further comment on Saturday on its safety protocols and procedures for inclement weather, but we are still waiting for a response.
We’ll bring more updates to this story as they become available.
