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A golfer died days after being struck by lightning during a tournament at a course in New Jersey earlier this month, the New York Post reports.
Simon John Mariani, 28, of Franklin Lakes, was struck on the 15th hole at Ballyowen Golf Course in Hardyston on July 8 and died from injuries sustained during the incident on Monday (July 14), according to an online obituary. Brian Delia, a fellow golfer, told ABC 7 Eyewitness News that he filmed the storm clouds in the darkened sky at the golf course minutes before Mariani was struck about 300 yards in front of him.
“I started filming, and he was right in front of me, and all of a sudden the lightning strikes and I ended the video recording and we immediately just started heading back to the clubhouse,” Delia said.
Fellow golfers and an off-duty firefighter attempted to perform CPR on Mariani, who was transported to a local hospital via medivac, News 12 NJ reports. A spokesperson for Crystal Springs Resort, which operates Ballyowen Golf Course, claimed that the storm developed rapidly and an alarm sounded warning participants to seek cover from the lightning, though Delia said his group never heard the warning.
“Nobody did say anything to us, we didn’t hear any horns to get off the course at all. They started blowing the horns when we were back at the clubhouse and that was after the police were already out there,” he told ABC 7 Eyewitness News.
Mariani was "a proud graduate of the University of Notre Dame (South Bend, IN), where in 2019 he received undergraduate degrees in Accounting and Economics" and "worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for 3 years and earned his CPA before returning to the University of Notre Dame, where in 2024 he received a Master’s in Finance (MBA)," according to his obituary.