When she woke up in the hospital after going out with her husband to walk dogs, Teresa Holmes was baffled.
“I was just really confused, I couldn’t work out why I was there and my daughters eventually had to explain they had lost their dad,” she told an inquest, according to a recent BBC report. Eventually she learned that her husband, Michael, had been trampled to death by cows.
Both the BBC and The Telegraph reported on the inquest this week.
Teresa had no memory of the Sept. 29, 2020 trampling incident until weeks later, said the BBC report. According to the Telegraph, the couple had been walking their daughter’s two dogs on leashes during a lunch break in Netherton, West Yorkshire.
It was just after noon, near an area the Holmes often walked during the lockdown in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were aware that there were sometimes cattle on the field,” she said, according to the Telegraph. “Quite often, we would come in the reverse way to the field and we’ve seen cattle and said we won’t go across the field. We’d take a different route.”
On this day, CCTV footage shows how they were attacked by cattle as they approached a footpath in the middle of a field. Teresa said there was no sign that several dozen cows were nearby.
She was knocked unconscious and suffered spinal fractures and spinal cord injuries as well as fractured ribs. These injuries left the mother of two confined to a wheelchair and forced her to take early retirement from her position in children’s services at Leeds City Council, per the Telegraph.
Her husband, a 57-year-old Telecoms worker, suffered 35 rib fractures and lacerations to his heart. An air ambulance arrived at the scene, where Michael was pronounced dead. Teresa eventually spent six months in the hospital.
“I don’t remember the incident, which is a good thing really because what happened must have been horrific,” she said, according to the Telegraph.
The dogs escaped the stampede and were found by a neighbor.
Others have also run into aggressive cattle at the field where the Holmes were trampled. A man named Burgess said he was left with four broken ribs after a June 2020 attack and a woman named Natalie Bain said she had “never been back” in the field since run-in with cattle there in August 2020.
According to the BBC, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recorded nine fatalities in the U.K. due to cattle in five years. There was a spike in incidents during 2020.
Cow-related fatalities also occur in the U.S. Business Insider reported in September 2021 that around 20 people in the nation die from cow attacks each year. At this rate, the Defenders of Wildlife organization estimates that cows are responsible for more deaths in the U.S. each year than Mexican gray wolves.
Teresa, who was Michael’s childhood sweetheart and was married to him for 34 years before the cow attack, said “he was a family man,” with a dry sense of humor.
“I do miss that,” she said. “He had his own unique wit.”
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