A 30 year old woman gets electrocuted when she stepped on a manhole cover on a New York City sidewalk while walking her dogs. This is from the NYC Daily News of January 17, 2004:

Electrocuted!

Woman, 30, killed while walking dogs in E. Village

By KERRY BURKE
and LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

A woman walking her two dogs in the East Village was killed when she fell onto an electrified Con Ed cable cover in the street last night, police said.

The dogs stepped onto the metal and cement covering and began fighting with each other in fright and pain, witnesses said.

They said the woman, Jodi Lane, 30, of E. 12th St., slipped and fell on the snowy ground as she tried to separate the panicky pets - and wound up on the charged slab.

Some 110 volts of electricity raced through her body.

The freak accident occurred in front of Veniero's, a popular pastry shop and magnet for tourists on E. 11th St. near First Ave. at 6:23 p.m. as Lane and her animals, an Alaskan Malamute and brown pit bull mix, crossed the street.

"All of a sudden, you could hear the dogs fighting, barking," said Jeanette Pacheco, 22, a Veniero's employee. "The brown dog had the white dog by the throat, and you could see blood in its mouth and on the sidewalk. The woman was screaming for help."

Stefania Lester, 50, a Veniero's cashier, said when Lane tried to separate the dogs, "one of them attacked her and she slipped and fell. She must have touched the grate."

Eagle Glazer, who watched the horror from his apartment window, said it was clear something terrible had happened.

"The dogs were lying still," he said, "and the woman was near them on the pavement, twitching."

Police said more than a dozen people surrounded Lane and tried to help. But only Siobhan Cronin was brave enough to touch her.

"I got to her and held her head," Cronin said, "and I could still feel the current coming through her. She was foaming at the mouth. All I could really do was cover her with my hat and jacket and try to comfort her."

Police said the 4-by-5-foot rectangle covered a Con Ed service box, where wires come together underground.

They said a live cable suffered a loss of insulation because of road salt and melting snow and came into contact with the metal on the cover, sending the deadly current running through it.

A cop touched Lane and got a jolt that sent her to Bellevue Hospital for overnight observation. Police then kept other people away from Lane until an ambulance arrived. She was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Medical Center at 7:30 p.m.

Lane's pets suffered severe burns and other injuries but survived, police said.

Both dogs had burns on their paws and the mixed breed "had his toenails burned off," according to Cronin, the good Samaritan.

She said a neighbor of Lane's on E. 12th St. took the dogs to a private vet, where they were treated and released to him.

In Lane building, where she and her boyfriend had a penthouse loft, landlord John Black, 50, said the young woman "was beautiful and everyone her loved her. They were the happiest couple on the block. They had plans for the future. Happiness was just blooming with them." Black said Lane and boyfriend Alex Wilbourne were both "very successful" engineers who were looking to get into real estate. Although the couple only moved in a year ago, they made many friends by throwing rooftop parties in the summer, he said.

Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert said: "We've got crews checking it out. We just don't know what happened yet."

Last night's incident was the latest in a series of winter electrocutions.

In 2000, a Manhattan woman's dog was shocked to death when it stepped on the sopping-wet carpet in a bank machine vestibule. Police said the animal was killed by electric currents flowing through ice and slush, helped along by salt used to melt snow.

A year earlier, a carriage horse was killed when it stepped on an electrically charged manhole cover on 59th St. and Park Ave.

With Martin Mbugua