Video of lightning strike: KC-area dad says ‘God’s hand’ saved him and 3-year-old son
With a flash and a bone-rattling bang, the lightning bolt came out of the heavens.
Dylon Conner of Blue Springs is convinced that God saved him and his son from being killed.
“I don’t chalk a lot of stuff up to coincidences,” said Conner, who was standing at the front door with his 3-year-old son, Liam, on Thursday, July 24, when a bolt of lightning pierced the neighborhood, striking a tree near his front lawn.
Conner and his son, Liam, were just about to walk outside, but were delayed for a fewl seconds. Over the last several days, the Ring doorbell video of the event has gone viral on TikTok, amassing close to 300,000 views.
“I feel like God’s hand was on the situation to allow pieces to fall into place to protect our family,” Conner said. “This was definitely a God thing.”
Faith is central to his life.
Employed as a manager of a health care analytics team, Conner, 32, is also a youth leader at a the Church of the Four Corners on Interstate 40 in Independence, the former campus of International House of Prayer University. Raised in Texas, he first came to the Kansas City area, where he eventualy met his wife, Cheyenne Zucca Conner, at a church retreat. In college, he was involved in campus ministry.
As Conner tells it, on July 24, minutes before 5 p.m., so many small moments conspired to keep him from picking up Liam, as he had planned, and walking out across their front lawn and past the silver oak tree at what would have been the precise wrong moment.
Count them: On Wednesday night, his wife decided to clean the room of their 10-year-old son, Cairo. In doing so, she found his umbrella and set it aside. On Thursday afternoon, the sky open up in a downpour just as Cheyenne was about to head to her intense “R.I.P” exerise class.
“Coincidentally named,” Conner joked.
Having car trouble, he had parked their van at the curb in front of the house.
“The plan was for me to pick up Liam, carry him to the car in the rain, get him loaded up into the van across the yard,” Conner said. “When Liam saw me pick up my umbrella, he ran down the hall to get the umbrella” — the one his wife had found earlier.
“Liam comes running down the hall with his umbrella and said, “Don’t worry, dad, my umbrella will help.’ It triggered, you know, me to pause, turn around and acknowledge what he said to me.
“And that’s when the lightning struck.”
“If that didn’t happen I would have been carrying Liam with me in the middle of the yard when the lightning hit the tree.”
Conner said the results could have been catastrophic; the ground was soaked, puddles pooling everywhere. His umbrella was metal. Liam, because of the rain, would have been in his arms.
“If she didn’t get the urge to clean our son’s room,” he said, “she wouldn’t have gotten the umbrella out form the back of the closet. Liam wouldn’t have run to grab the umbrella, preventing me from carrying him into the middle of the yard.”
In a subequent TikTok video, Conner thanks viewers for their comments of kindness, including noting that Liam’s decision to grab an umbrella may have saved both their lives.
“It’s 100% true,” Conner said. “I do owe him more of my life. I owe him my life because he’s my son and I’m going to give my life for my children. But more so now because he saved my life. He got me to stop, turn around, address what he said, and the lightning struck. It was really a surreal moment.”
The Conner family prays regularly.
“I mean, I definitley thank God for keeping us safe,” Conner said. “My wife and I kind of sat down and just recounted all of the ‘coincidences,’ like God’s hand, in the situation.”
As for the tree, Conner hopes it will be OK. It’s his son’s favorite, strung with a swing. The lightning, he said, split part of the length of the trunk and into its some upper branches. He has yet to call an arborist, but still might. He hopes the tree survives.
“I thank God for, like, every little moment. So when something big like this happens, it’s just part of my natural, like, thank you God for keeping us safe.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2025 at 5:07 PM.
