Major League Baseball

Woman's shocking claim against Yanks

Published Apr. 14, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

A Brooklyn woman said she got the shock of her life at Yankee Stadium when she stepped on a metal plate and was jolted by so much electricity that she had to be hospitalized, the New York Post reported Thursday.

Portia Walton, 54, said she was struck down as she was heading to the ballpark on April 4 to watch the Yankees face the Minnesota Twins.

"I felt tingling on my ankles," she said. "I was saying, 'Oh my God! Oh my God!'"

Walton said she was in an outdoor dining area outside the Stadium's Hard Rock Cafe when she put her foot on a metal hatch that had a power cord sticking out of it. The cord was being used to power some lights in a nearby tent.

Walton, who describes herself as a multimedia artist, said she first started feeling electricity and then heard crackling like an electric transformer. Stadium guards immediately rushed to her aid.

"I started getting a headache," she said. "I couldn't get myself together. I was shocked that I was shocked."

She was first taken to an aid station in the stadium, before being treated at the emergency room at Lincoln Hospital.

She said as recently as Wednesday that she was still suffering from headaches, memory loss, tingling and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Walton has hired attorneys Matthew Blit and Les Levine, who plan to file a $2 million suit against the Yankees and the Hard Rock Cafe.

"It was a jury-rigged system that was not safe for the public. They obviously didn't care much about the risk, they care more about selling their expensive skyboxes," Levine said.

A metal plate has apparently been put over the spot where Walton was shocked, Levine said Wednesday.

Yankees spokeswoman Alice McGillion said, "A woman on the fourth [of April] alleged that she got a shock. We had EMTs check her out. We insisted that she go to the hospital, and as far as we know she was treated and released."