A day after two people were electrocuted and two more were injured when they came into contact with a power line along Bryie Road outside Churubusco, investigators were still looking for definitive answers.

Mourners left plastic flowers and a natural pink rose on the side of Bryie on Wednesday, the site where Samantha Merchant, 17, and Charles Webb, 35, died. Shards and splinters of a wooden electrical pole that Merchant hit when she lost control of her teal Ford were scattered in the grass. A new pole had replaced the old one. A large swath of cornstalks from the field off the road was trampled where the Ford had ended up.

'We're still kind of scratching our heads on this,' said Lynn Sauders, safety training and risk management coordinator for Northeastern REMC, who in 21 years at the company has never seen electrical deaths involving an automobile accident.

According to police, Merchant, of Churubusco, lost control of her Ford on the narrow gravel road around 7:45 p.m. Tuesday and hit the pole. She was driving with her friend, Shawn Fingerle, 15, also of Churubusco. The pole broke at about knee level, Allen County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Stone said. According to Stone, the power line - a 7,200-volt primary distribution line - hung inches off the ground. It was hidden by darkness and cornstalks.

Webb and his girlfriend, Marina Garza, 39, both of Fort Wayne, were driving past when they stopped to get out and help the teens. Garza told police that as she and Webb approached the Ford, Webb dropped to the ground, Stone said. Garza said she felt a shock and lost consciousness for a few moments. Presumably, both walked into the power line. Somehow, Merchant and Fingerle also came into contact with the downed line, possibly by also walking into it.

Merchant and Webb died at the scene. Fingerle was airlifted to Parkview Hospital in serious condition, where he remains, and Garza was taken to Parkview in good condition.

Sauders said that as far as he understood, the power line never broke, came off the pole or hit the ground. He was told that the pole broke off but was suspended in the air by the power lines. Sauders said Northeastern REMC has fuses and circuit breakers that work like those in a home. When a circuit becomes overloaded or something goes wrong, it flips off, causing power to go off. In this case, Sauders said, nothing happened to cause a fault current that would shut the power to the line off.

'The first thing we try to tell people in these situations is to stay in the vehicle,' Sauders said. 'One reason you do that is that you don't know if the power is off or not. That also goes for a Good Samaritan. You really need to take a good look at the scene, see the power lines and stay away until EMT or firefighters or the power company arrives to guarantee safety.'

Sauders said coming into direct contact with the line itself could shock and kill someone. It wasn't clear whether the line came in contact with the Ford, but Sauders said if it did and someone touched the steel of the vehicle, he or she could be electrocuted as well. That's because that person would form a conductor for electricity to hit the ground. Staying inside a vehicle in a situation where it's touching a live wire is potentially safe because the tires form an insulator on the ground.

'Electricity is always seeking the ground, and it's looking for any conductor, including you, because you're made up of a lot of water, and it'll get there,' Sauders said. 'It doesn't take much of a conductor or path. It will go through you.'

Sauders said power was cut to the entire Bryie Road area when the power company got word of the crash so emergency and rescue workers at the scene would be safe. He said there were too many variables to understand why two people died and two people lived after coming into contact with the same power line. A person's body type, weather conditions and the amperage - the strength of an electric current - all play a part.

Sauders did not know the amperage of the power line along Bryie Road, but he said many electrical deaths are not due to the volts, but the amperage. He said it can take as little as 50 milliamps to stop someone's heart.