Bevin Prince recalls an eerie moment her late husband William Friend experienced just before he was struck by lightning two months ago.
“Right before it hit him, he lit a cigar and he looked at my father and he said, ‘If we get struck by lightning, Mike, this is where I wanna be,’” the “One Tree Hill” alum said on “Good Morning America” Friday.
“And then it happened. I believe it was really his time.”
Prince, 40, explained why she believes there was “divinity” in Friend’s passing.
“He was 33 years old. It was July 3 and I believe the exact time that the lightning struck was 3:13 p.m.,” the actress said.
“So knowing that all the resources were there to potentially save him, I have to believe that something bigger beyond me was calling him.”
The fitness instructor was on a boat with family and friends in North Carolina on July 3 when they “saw a storm in the distance.”
Since there were “60-some boats out there,” too, and “no urgency” for anyone to get off the water at that time, the group did not move.
“We’d been there so many times,” Prince, who joined her father on another nearby boat at the time, said. “We were watching it.”
The New York Film Academy grad noted that Friend’s death was “instant,” adding, “[EMS] rushed over to him and … a police boat happened to be coming by, so they moved him over to the police boat quickly, and from what I’ve heard, spent a lot of time and care trying to resuscitate him.”
When news broke of Friend’s death over the summer, Prince’s friend and former co-star Hilarie Burton penned a touching tribute.
“It’s unfathomable,” the “White Collar” alum, 40, wrote via Instagram, calling Prince “strong” and “light personified.”
Prince broke her silence on her partner’s death in a “1 on 1 With Jon Evans” podcast episode earlier this month.
“Some days, it doesn’t feel OK, and I think the thing I remind myself is, I have two options,” she said on Dec. 2. “I can stay here on this planet, or I cannot, and that’s not an option for me.”