Electric box shock described by LV man

Dan Kulin and Emily Richmond

Thursday, Aug. 21, 2003 | 11:04 a.m.

A electric box nearly identical to the one that apparently electrocuted a tourist on the Strip last week, severely shocked a dog in a Las Vegas park last summer, sending the dog into convulsions and causing it to bite its owner when he tried to help the pet, according to court records.

"I knew immediately it was identical to my situation. It's the same type of box, the same size, and it's all unnecessary," the dog's 77-year-old owner, Donald Randall, said.

Randall, who is suing Clark County and others over his incident, says the metal lids over electric boxes in the ground should be replaced with plastic or ceramic lids, to give citizens another layer of protection from electric shocks.

Some of the boxes are covered with a non-metal lid made of concrete and Fiberglas, county Public Works spokesman Bobby Shelton said. He said switching all the lids would be an expensive venture, but added "it's something we may look at."

Shelton said the non-metal lids are more likely to crack and break than the metal lids, and thus pose a different set of problems.

Randall was walking his Doberman pinscher Baron in Winchester Park in July 2002 when the dog touched the metal lid on an electric box. Electricity surged through the dog, which then bit Randall's hands when he tried to help it, according to a lawsuit Randall has filed against Clark County, the landscaping company and an electrical company.

Randall's dog survived, but the bites left Randall with sever injuries to both hands.

"I had casts on both of my hands for four or five months and I had to have my thumb sewed back on," he said.

Randall, a retired accountant, said he was struck by the similarities between his incident and the one that killed a tourist on The Strip last week.

Rebecca Longhoffer, 39, of Louisville, Ky., was electrocuted and died Saturday after stepping on the metal plate of a street utility box at Las Vegas Boulevard South near Spring Mountain Road. The incident occurred during a heavy thunderstorm.

County spokesman Erik Pappa said that "it's premature to say whether the two incidents are similar or not. We're still gathering the facts. What we can say is that everyone feels terrible about what happened and that public safety is our top priority."

In response to Longhoffer's death, the county is working on a schedule of inspections for all of its more than 70,000 utility boxes, Pappa said.

"The county manager named a committee of all the department heads and we're going to present a report to the County Commission Sept. 2 for enhancing our inspection process," Pappa said.

Shelton said Monday there was neither the manpower for the money to inspect all of the utility boxes.

Inspections are now a priority, Pappa said.

Jan Paul Koch, the attorney representing Randall, said Shelton's comments Monday irked him.

"They had the report on what happened to Mr. Randall, and they knew there were problems before the tragedy with that poor lady," Koch said.

Randall's case is scheduled for a Dec. 2 jury trial in District Court.