Luke Bennett: Teenager, 17, Died After Being Electrocuted While Playing Football With Friends

A teenage boy who died by electrocution after a metal pole he was holding made contact with an overhead power line would "likely have survived" if paramedics had not been sent to the wrong location, an inquest heard.

An inquest was told how Luke Bennett would have likely survived if he got medical treatment earlier.

Luke Bennett, 17, had gone to Euxton Villa FC in Chorley with seven friends to play football. The teenagers climbed through a hole in the fence on March 6, 2021. Luke and two friends - Lewis Geszke and Ben Wilcock - started "messing around" with a metal pole that was used to separate benches from the pitch

The youngsters attempted to straighten the pole, which made contact with an overhead power line, causing the friends to be thrown to the ground.

Ben Doherty, an eyewitness to the events, said the three teenagers were trying to stand the pole up on its end.

Ben said all three of the friends collapsed to the floor shaking.

George Cooper, another witness, described seeing flames at the top of the pole and hearing a "buzzing noise".

Luke managed to stand up before collapsing to the floor again, he had been electrocuted with 11,000 volts.

Ben and Lewis were both knocked unconscious for a short time and when they came round, they saw CPR being performed on Luke.

The emergency services were called at 5.58pm by one of the teenagers and it took an ambulance 23 minutes to get to the scene, arriving at 6.21pm.

The ambulance service had initially been told the pitch was next to Runshaw College and were finally diverted to the actual address, causing them to lose valuable time.

The mistake meant a defibrillator was not located at the football club because the call handler thought the boy had said Euxton, not Euxton Villa.

Luke’s heart had ‘completely stopped’ despite the best efforts of paramedics and doctors, and he was pronounced dead on the football pitch at 6.48pm.

The inquest at County Hall in Preston heard Luke's friends were told not to touch him until emergency services arrived in case they were also electrocuted.

Doctor Ian Schofield told the inquest that Luke would likely have survived had CPR been administered up to 10 minutes after the shock.

He said: "It is more likely than not that he would have survived had CPR been started earlier.

"And if a defibrillator had been available and used within the first 10 minutes it is highly likely he would have survived."

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