Lightning Kills Girl In Swing

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas - Lightning hit a tree and killed a little girl in a home-made swing here Friday as three playmates watched in horror.
Dead was 4-year-old Dollie Marie Bryan, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Alex J. Bryan, Route 1, on Nicholson Road.
The bolt struck as a thunderstorm accompanied by light rain, moved through the Dallas area about 6 p.m.
Police Sgt. J. J. Chennault and Justice of the Peace David Johnston gave this picture of the tragedy in the little girl's yard:
The brown-haired child, clad in a sunsuit for the sweltering afternoon, sat in a shady swing watching her brother, Herbert Bryan, 13, sister Annie, 14, and a cousin, Bryan Haycock, 17, play with a ball.
The swing hung by chains from a limb on a tall cottonwood tree.
A light rain began to fall. Next instant a "loud noise like something cracked" froze the four youngsters for an instant.
"Sparks flew out at us," the older children recalled. And little Dollie fell out of the swing.
Lightning had hit the limb, sizzled 12 feed down a chain, welding the links stretching under the wood swing seat beneath the girl and up 2 feet on the other side.
Herbert screamed for his mother.  he scooped up the little girl and ran into the house.
Mrs. Bryan said she sent Annie and Haycock racing to telephone for help while Herbert tired in vain to revive his little sister with artificial respiration.
She was dead on arrival at Dallas Parkland Hospital in a fire volunteer's ambulance. Justice Johnston ruled accidental death.

The Dallas Morning News - June 24, 1961
Submitted by Edward Lynn Williams

Lighining killed Marie Bryan, 4, of Farmers Branch, near Dallas Friday night during an electrical storm. She was playing on a swing

Abilene Reporter-News (and several others) - June 26, 1961
Submitted by Edward Lynn Williams