PARIS, Nov 20 (NNN-AGENCIES) – A pregnant woman was killed by dogs, while walking her own dog, in a forest in northern France, during a hunt with hounds, investigators said.
The body of the 29-year-old woman was found in a forest, outside the town of Villers-Cotterêts, about 90 km north-east of Paris, the prosecutor’s office said.
An autopsy showed, she had died of “bleeding, after several dog bites to the upper and lower limbs and the head,” prosecutor, Frederic Trinh said, on Tuesday.
Trinh said, tests had been carried out on 93 dogs, including some hounds, from the hunt and five dogs belonging to the woman herself, to try to establish which ones attacked her.
The police have launched an investigation into manslaughter by dog attack.
According to local newspaper, Le Courrier Picard, the dogs were hunting deer.
The woman had called her partner, while walking her dog, to report the presence of “threatening dogs,” the prosecutor’s office said. It was he, who later discovered her body.
Brigitte Bardot, president of her eponymous animal welfare foundation, declared herself deeply shocked on hearing the case and, in a letter, urged Élisabeth Borne, the French minister for ecological transition, to suspend “immediately all hunt authorisation for this season.”
But the Paris-headquartered French hunting association said, “nothing shows the involvement of hunting hounds in the death of this woman.”
France has more than 30,000 hunt hounds in total, and the association stated that, “these dogs are trained to hunt a particular animal and obey man in all circumstances.”– NNN-AGENCIES
