A British woman has died after she was shot by her companion during a wild boar hunt in France on Sunday, in what a prosecutor described as a “dramatic accident”.
The 67-year-old was wounded “above the heart” and taken to hospital in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, where she died around midday, said the prosecutor, Nicolas Heitz.
The hunting party of around a dozen people had been crossing a corn field in the Goudelin area when the woman was shot in the chest.
“The hunters were advancing through a field of corn silage when one of them, a 69-year-old man, in circumstances yet to be determined, fired with his shoulder-mounted rifle, barrel pointing towards the back,” according to a press release published by the prosecutors office and cited by local media.
“The shot reached his companion … and whose bullet caused a penetrating wound above the heart.”
The gendarmes of the Lanvollon brigade were called for a hunting accident in Goudelin around 11am, the prosecutor’s office said.
The woman died at 12.20pm, despite the intervention of emergency services.
A 69-year-old man was taken into custody and a manslaughter investigation was launched.
While the exact circumstances of the shooting are yet to be established, initial tests determined the shooter was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs, said Heitz.
An autopsy was scheduled to take place on Wednesday.
The accidental killing of a hiker by a teenager who was hunting wild boar in February this year rekindled a bitter debate over stricter regulations of France’s hunting tradition. The 25-year-old woman was walking with a friend along a marked trail near Aurillac in the heavily forested Cantal region when she was hit by a stray bullet. She died instantly.
This article was first published by The Guardian on 17 October 2022. Lead Image: File photo of hunters walking past a sign reading ‘Hunt in progress, let’s be careful together’ in Hirsingue, eastern France. Photograph: Sébastien Bozon/AFP/Getty Images.
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