AR-News: (NY - US) Woman electrocuted while walking her dogs

[Snugglezzz at aol.com]

For years the dog community in NYC has been trying to get Con Edison to  
assume responsibility for their electrified manhole covers and other  areas of 
active electricity. Our dogs were getting zapped for years,  some rather badly and  some killed.  Nothing was ever done.   Now this poor woman lost her life.  BE  CAREFUL!!!
   
  ELECTROCUTED!!!!!!
  
          Woman, 30, killed while walking dogs  in E. Village
  
     
  By KERRY  BURKE 
  and LEO STANDORA
  DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS  
  
     
  Con Ed  junction box is visible on 11th St. near First Ave., where woman was 
  electrocuted by eroded wire.     
      
  A woman walking her two dogs in the East Village was killed when  she fell 
  onto an electrified Con Ed cable cover in the street last  night, police said. 
 The dogs stepped onto the metal and cement covering  and began fighting with each 
 other in fright and pain, witnesses  said.They said the woman, Jodi Lane, 30, 
 of E. 12th St., slipped and  fell on the snowy ground as she tried to separate 
 the panicky pets -  and wound up on the charged slab.Some 110 volts of 
 electricity raced  through her body. The freak accident occurred in front of Veniero's,  a  popular pastry shop and magnet for tourists on E. 11th St. near First Ave. at 6:23 p.m. as Lane and her animals, an Alaskan Malamute and brown pit  bull  mix, crossed the street."All of a sudden, you could hear the dogs  fighting,  barking," said Jeanette Pacheco, 22, a Veniero's employee.  "The brown dog had the  white dog by the throat, and you could see blood  in its mouth and on the  sidewalk. The woman was screaming for  help."Stefania Lester, 50, a Veniero's 
 cashier, said when Lane tried to  separate the dogs, "one of them attacked her and   she slipped and fell.  She must have touched the grate."Eagle Glazer, who 
 watched the horror  from his apartment window, said it was clear something terrible  had  happened."The dogs were lying still," he said, "and the woman was near them  on the pavement, twitching."Police said more than a dozen people  surrounded  Lane and tried to help. But only Siobhan Cronin was brave  enough to touch her. 

 "I got to her and held her head," Cronin said,  "and I could still feel the 
 current coming through her. She was foaming  at the mouth. All I could really do 
 was cover her with my hat and  jacket and try to comfort her."Police said the 
 4-by-5-foot rectangle  covered a Con Ed service box, where wires come together 
 underground.  They said a live cable suffered a loss of insulation because of 
 road  salt and melting snow and came into contact with the metal on the cover,  
 sending the deadly current running through it.A cop touched Lane and  got a jolt 
 that sent her to Bellevue Hospital for overnight  observation. Police then kept 
 other people away from Lane until an  ambulance arrived. She was pronounced 
 dead at Beth Israel Medical  Center at 7:30 p.m.Lane's pets suffered severe burns 
 and other injuries  but survived, police said.Both dogs had burns on their paws 
 and the  mixed breed "had his toenails burned off," according to Cronin, the 
  good Samaritan.She said a neighbor of Lane's on E. 12th St. took the dogs to a  
 private vet, where they were treated and released to him.In Lane  building, 
 where she and her boyfriend had a penthouse loft, landlord  John Black, 50, said 
 the young woman "was beautiful and everyone her  loved her. They were the 
 happiest couple on the block. They had plans  for the future. Happiness was just 
 blooming with them." Black said Lane  and boyfriend Alex Wilbourne were both "very  successful" engineers who  were looking to get into real estate. Although the   couple only moved in  a year ago, they made many friends by throwing rooftop  parties in the  summer, he said.Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert said: "We've got  crews  checking it out. We just don't know what happened yet."Last night's incident  was the latest in a series of winter electrocutions.In 2000, a  Manhattan  woman's dog was shocked to death when it stepped on the  sopping-wet carpet in a  bank machine vestibule. Police said the animal  was killed by electric currents  flowing through ice and slush, helped  along by salt used to melt snow.A year  earlier, a carriage horse was  killed when it stepped on an electrically charged   manhole cover on 59th  St. and Park Ave.

With Martin Mbugua   Originally published on January 17, 2004