Florida father mourns wife and 2-year-old daughter killed by lightning strike

Kameron Glasgow was feet away when lightning struck Kenya Glasgow and their daughter Kennedi outside a family member’s home.

Kameron Glasgow was close enough to feel the current move through his legs.

He told NBC6 that he was standing feet away from his wife and daughter Sunday afternoon when lightning struck them outside his aunt’s home in Margate. The family had arrived for dinner, watched the weather deteriorate and made a run for the door. They didn’t reach it.

Kenya Glasgow, 31, and 2-year-old Kennedi were found on the sidewalk along the 7900 block of Northwest 1st Street around 2:30 p.m. Officers and fire rescue crews began CPR at the scene, according to Margate police, but both died shortly after reaching area hospitals. Kennedi’s twin sister, Kensli, was still in the car.

What Glasgow described to NBC6 was less the physical shock than the recognition that followed, calling the sight of his wife and daughter lifeless worse than the moment itself.

He wrote publicly the next day, framing his grief around a lesson he said he learned after losing his father, never question God. He told readers his family didn’t suffer, acknowledged the pain, and asked anyone who had experienced what he called the light Kenya and Kennedi carried to hold onto it, noting that it doesn’t take much to be kind.

Much of his focus has landed on Kensli. Glasgow said he will be okay because he has to be, but that words fail when it comes to a toddler losing her twin, something he doubts she can process yet. He described Kennedi as having the biggest heart in the world.

The couple would have marked four years of marriage in November.

Weather data collected that day underscores how volatile conditions were. NBC6 reported that its Doppler system logged more than 200 strikes within 20 miles of Margate between 2 and 3 p.m., and the National Weather Service counted five cloud-to-ground strikes within a mile of where the family was hit. Neighbors said they assumed it was an ordinary storm until one strike shook their houses.

Chris Vagasky of the National Lightning Safety Council reiterated the standard guidance to NBC6, thunder carries up to 15 miles, and hearing it means you’re already within range.

The deaths mark Florida’s third and fourth lightning fatalities this year.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Glasgow with the care for and of his daughter, Kensli, twin sister to Kennedi.