Two 25-year-old elk hunters found dead in Colorado were struck by lightning: ‘Horrific act of nature’

Two 25-year-old elk hunters who were found dead in the Colorado wilderness after vanishing for a week were killed by a lightning bolt, according to the local coroner.

Andrew Porter and Ian Stasko died instantaneously when they were struck by lightning while out hunting on the Rio de los Pinos trailhead, a remote area in the National Forest, Conejos County Coroner Richard Martin told multiple outlets.

The pair were found under a tree with “slight burns” on their bodies, Martin told the Colorado Sun.

“A slight burn is like if you take a match and stick it on your arm,” he told the outlet.

“And there were only two or three of them,” he said.

The two seasoned outdoorsmen died instantly, though Martin has yet to determine the exact time of death.

“That kind of death is just instant. It’s like you’re alive and now you’re not,” the coroner said. “Just that quick. Split second.” 

Full autopsy results for Porter, of Asheville, North Carolina, and Stasko, of Salt Lake City, Utah, will take roughly eight weeks to be released, but Martin told People he is confident in the preliminary findings.

“I’m telling you, that’s what it was,” he told the outlet.

The remains of the two friends were found by Colorado search and rescue teams around 11 a.m. on Thursday after a frantic week-long search.

Porter’s aunt, Lynne Runkle, had previously theorized in a GoFundMe statement that the young hunters were possibly “caught off guard” by storms that moved through the area.

Their last known contact was just after 3 p.m. Sept. 11, when Porter last shared his location through a satellite device with his fiancée, Bridget Murphy.

It had last pinged from his car near the trailhead, the Colorado Sun previously reported.

An intensive ground and air search was launched over the following days involving multiple rescue teams.

“It is OFFICIAL, that a lightning strike to the ground took them in an instant. They didn’t do anything wrong, they didn’t feel fear or pain,” Murphy wrote in a Facebook post.

“He was just trying to get back to the car as storms rolled in on Friday – September 12. It was out of everyone’s hands, and I am so grateful we found them so they can be at peace. He was an experienced outdoorsman, who was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.”

“It may not have been legal yet, but he was my husband and partner. We have been together quite awhile, but lived together like a married couple for the past 3 years. I wish I had 30 more. I sure feel like a widow. I sure feel like my future is blank now,” Murphy heartbreakingly wrote.

“But what reassures me is that they were doing what they loved, without fear, well prepared and equipped and this is a bizarre horrific act of nature. It could’ve happened anywhere, to anyone,” she said.

Martin did not immediately respond to the Post’s request for comment.