BARKER, N.Y. —Plenty of motorists are getting sticker shock at the gas pump these days. William Hall got a real shock — from a bolt of lightning.

The western New York man was putting gasoline into his pickup truck Wednesday at a Niagara County convenience store when he was struck by lightning.

The bolt knocked out the 44-year-old Hall for a few minutes and caused some blistering, but otherwise he was all right.

His wife, Kym, was sitting in the truck but wasn’t hurt.

One of the store’s surveillance cameras shows the lightning bolt hitting the parking lot while another shows Hall toppling over next to the gas pump after being struck.

“I thought he dove for cover,” Kym Hall said Friday, describing a bright white light and “phenomenal” crack.

Then she saw someone running from the store to check on her husband and realized what had happened.

“I started slapping him silly. People say I watch too much TV,” Kym Hall said with a laugh. “He finally came to but was very incoherent. I said, ‘Did you get hit by lightning?’ He said ‘yeah.’

“I said, ’Do we need an ambulance?’ He said, ‘I don’t know what I need.’ I said ‘Get an ambulance!”’

Kym Hall praised the emergency workers who rushed her husband to the hospital — even the one who had him rub his lottery ticket for luck on the way.

At the hospital, doctors wanted Hall to stay overnight, but he signed himself out.

“If it didn’t kill me then it’s not going to kill me now,” he said.

Hall returned to the store Thursday to finish filling up his truck.

AP-ES-10-03-08 1530EDT