CHESTERFIELD, Va. -- A beautiful Wednesday at Virginia Beach took a sudden turn when the wind kicked up around 5:00 p.m. and beach umbrellas went flying.
Lottie Belk, who was visiting the beach from Chester for her birthday and anniversary, was struck and killed by one of the umbrellas.
“I need a unit to 33rd street at the beach. A woman impaled by an umbrella. She is in and out of consciousness at this time,” an emergency dispatcher said over the police scanner when it happened.
Lottie Belk
Jessica Barton, who lives not far from Belk in Chesterfield, said she was also at Virginia Beach Wednesday enjoying the sun with friends.
“That was actually a couple of hours after what happened to me,” Barton said.
It was in the middle of the afternoon when she laid down on her stomach to tan when she suddenly felt a sharp pain.
“I feel like a big scratch on the back of my neck, and right when I lift up my head something pulls my earring out of my ear, and then I just see blood and an umbrella rolling away,” Barton said.
Jessica Barton's shoulder
A scar shows where the umbrella ripped her skin.
“It’s just really sore if you touch it,” Barton said.
Barton said that umbrella belonged to a man renting umbrellas on the beach.
In fact, she said he was using it for himself.
“I don’t think he knows what he’s doing,” Barton said about the man.
Now, she hopes others will pay attention to her story and be careful if it’s a windy day on the shore.
“It can happen to you. It’s scary…because it happens so fast,” Barton said.
Back in March, CBS 6 reporter Melissa Hipolit talked to a Henrico man who was impaled by a beach umbrella in his eye while at the beach in Delaware.
