Shocking news

Margie Burton, a member of EnergyUnited, remembers a horrific day in April 1978 when she learned that her brother was killed. Danny Lee Messick was 23 years old, and on that pleasant spring day he was in Salisbury with his best friend helping to move a neighbor's mobile home to a location 50 feet away.

According to the Rowan County sheriff's report, three young men and the 55-year-old father-in-law of one of them had the house trailer hitched to a truck. Before moving it, they wanted to detach a metal porch from the mobile home. As all four men attempted to lift the porch, either the CB radio antenna or the TV antenna attached to the porch was drawn to contact a Duke Power electric distribution line carrying 7,200 volts, typical for a neighborhood power line. All four men were electrocuted instantly.

Witnesses watched flames burn three of the bodies to charred heaps. "My brother was the only one that did not burn up," Margie Burton told Carolina Country. "God knew that it would push me over the edge. The hair all over his body was singed. We believe that he was trying to save his best friend, because his arm was laying across his friend. There was a man who got there before the power was shut off who was a friend of the family and also a police officer. He tried to take a stick and get Danny's arm off of his friend, but the power in the ground knocked him backward. He was lucky. He could have been the fifth body."

Earl Fred Gaskey, 30, had lived in the mobile home with his wife and two children. His wife, who had been watching as her husband and her father were moving the porch, was quickly led away from the scene along with a number of children.

"I've never seen anything that bad and never want to again," a witness told the Salisbury Post the next day. "I didn't sleep any last night. I just kept seeing it."

Margie Burton says now, "That day changed my way of thinking and left a hole in my heart. God knew what he was doing, but the hurt is still in my heart. People just don't realize the amount of power that runs through those lines and the damage it can do. I know that all those men did not think that they were getting that close or that the power would pull that antenna to the power line. People need to realize: even if you think you are safe, think twice about what you are going to do."