Friend tells court how woman fell while trying to pull her dog away

A woman suffered fatal injuries when she was trampled by cows as she walked across a field, an inquest heard today.

Anita Hinchey, 63, was out for a long walk in countryside near Cardiff with her boxer dog, Woody, together with her friend, Ruth Tugwell, and her mongrel.

Tugwell told Cardiff coroner's court that she was nervous of cows and kept away from them but Hinchey, an animal lover, showed no fear of them. She said: "I was slightly ahead when I saw the cows. They looked up and seemed curious and started to move towards us both. They were coming in a semi-circular formation so I was heading towards the end so I could get away from them.

"Anita was walking nearer to them than me. She wasn't ever nervous of cows and used to give them water right outside her house when the river had dried up."

Tugwell said when she next turned around her friend, who worked as an assessor for an organisation to help businesses improve their performance, was surrounded by cows.

She said Hinchey, from the St George's-super-Ely area of Cardiff, looked as though she was holding on to Woody's collar, trying to pull him away.

"She appeared to trip backwards and because it was an incline couldn't get her footing and started to fall backwards. I saw her head moving fast and I assume that's when she was hit by the hoof of a cow. Her eyes were closed and she was falling almost into a foetal position. I thought she was unconscious."

A postmortem examination found that she died from multiple injuries.

Peter Davies, the farmer who owns the field, said there was no public right of way where the two women were walking. He said it would have been unusual for the animals not to show curiosity and that the best reaction was to "shoo" them.

The coroner, Mary Hassell, said there had been no evidence that either woman's dog had been worrying the cattle. She recorded a verdict of accidental death.