Community mourns loss of woman struck, killed by lightning
SPRING LAKE, N.C. (WTVD) -- John Guiseppe reached out to his friend Dan Roberts early Tuesday morning.
Guiseppe has been in Roberts' shoes, but this was still different. Guiseppe lost his wife to cancer in 2000. It was a slow painful death, which is why he can't imagine Roberts' loss of a spouse to a lightning strike.
"It's a tragedy," said Guiseppe. "That's all you can call it, and who knows... Nobody knows why. We'll get that answer some day... all of us."
Frankie Roberts, 56, died Sunday, three days after she and her two dogs were struck by lightning. The fatal strike occurred right in front of Robert's Anderson Creek Club home on Thursday morning.
The two dogs died immediately, but Dan Roberts found his wife unresponsive in front of the home before paramedics rushed her to the hospital.
"You always hear about it in the news, but then when it actually like this happens...it hits you that something like this could happen to you," said Regina Wiechert, a neighbor who described her family as shocked to learn of Roberts' death.
"Unfortunately, (if) she put on her lipstick, maybe she would have been a minute later, or she would have left a little earlier..." said Guiseppe, running through the "what ifs."
"Wrong place, wrong time," he continued.
By all descriptions, Frankie Roberts lit up any room she entered. Wiechert said she would line dance at neighborhood parties. She was a known animal lover, a charitable woman, the life of the party and a pretty good golfer.
"Beautiful girl, and she was still beautiful now," said Giuseppe. "What can you say? Don't have any words."
The Fayetteville native and Terry Sanford High School graduate was so much more to her family.
Ashley Roberts said "she was the glue" to their family.
"She was an amazing person, certainly a force to be reckoned with," she wrote in a text. "I have never known anyone like her. She truly impacted people's lives."
Roberts's visitation will be held Wednesday in Fayetteville, with a funeral service on Thursday.
