LAMONT, Calif. — The tables were turned at a California cockfight after a man was fatally stabbed in the leg by a sharp blade attached to one of the fighting birds, The Bakersfield Californian reported.

Jose Luis Ochoa, 35, was taken to a local hospital shortly after police responded to a reported cockfight last Sunday in Lamont, Calif., a town nine miles south-southeast of Bakersfield.

An autopsy revealed Wednesday that Ochoa’s death was accidental and caused by an injury to his right calf.

“I have never seen this type of incident,” Sgt. Martin King, a 24-year veteran, told the paper. But he noted that it was not surprising that Ochoa died since one of his major arteries had likely been severed. “People have been known to bleed out from those injuries if medical attention is not obtained immediately.”

John Goodwin, director of animal cruelty policy for the Humane Society of the United States, also weighed in, telling the paper he was “surprised it doesn’t happen more often considering the knives they put on those birds.”

Just last month, the UK’s Daily Mail reported that a man in India was killed when his fighting rooster slashed his throat.

Ochoa paid $370 in fines last year after pleading no contest to one count of owning or training an animal for fighting, the paper said. Goodwin noted that the small fines were a weak deterrent to the bettors’ pots which can reach $10,000 even in a small cockfight.