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DTE Investigates Circumstances Surrounding Teen's Live Wire Shock

DETROIT (WWJ) - DTE is investigating how a teen was shocked and critically injured by a live wire Monday outside Burns Elementary School.

DTE's Trevor Lauer tells WWJ's Sandra McNeill that they began receiving calls about the wire about midnight the night before. There were crews in the area, but he's not sure if there was a crew at the scene.

"We have multiple GPS units throughout all of our vehicles and we can confirm that we had multiple DT Energy crews throughout that area over a period of time," said Lauer. "We are still trying to track down the exact information that would correlate with what the investigators in this situation would want to understand."

Police say the teen lifted the wire so he and other could walk under it and was shocked.

While walking with friends through a field on his way back home, the boys encountered downed power lines near Marlowe Street at Lyndon and Hubbell.

"We continue to go through all the records we have to understand exactly when we received the calls what was happening dispatch - we were in the heat of the storm receiving thousands of calls a minute with wire down cases and with outages -- we were dispatching public safety crews throughout the night as we went so we continue to work with the local officials to understand exactly what did happen," said Lauer.

Lauer says wires down at a school should be a top priority. "On behalf of DT Energy our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and we certainly hope the best for the young man," said Lauer.

The boy remains in critical condition. Police said the three boys who were with the teen should be considered heroes because they got the wire off their friend by using a piece of wood.

Class at Burns Elementary will resume Wednesday.

 

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