'Stray bullet' from wild boar hunt kills woman at her home in northern Spain

A woman has died at her home from an alleged stray bullet during a wild boar hunt in Spain's Basque Country.

According to municipal sources, the incident on Sunday 17 December was caused by a "stray bullet" from the gun of a hunter in the area near the 75-year-old woman's house in the town of Deba in Gipuzkoa province. Relatives of the victim alerted emergency services at about 3pm that the woman was on the floor of her house with a bleeding head injury.

An ambulance crew and police rushed to the scene where she was treated for an alleged gunshot wound and was taken, still alive, to Donostia Hospital. But she was pronounced dead at 6.40pm.

Police confirmed a bullet hole in one of the windows in the woman's house, which came from the outside. According to municipal sources, the incident was caused by a stray bullet from a routine wild boar hunt in a wooded area known as Mancha de Istina. Some 25 people took part in the hunt. Police seized their weapons and breathalysed them before conducting interviews with each of them.

Death in November

This is not the only hunting-related accident in recent times. On 8 November, an 87-year-old man from Guipuzcoa died after falling from a pigeon loft while hunting in Navarre. At the time of the incident he was in a group of five hunting enthusiasts. The man fell from a height of eight metres, dying on the spot. The victim, Félix Badiola, was from Irun and lived with his wife in Hondarribia. He was a keen hunting enthusiast and had been a regular hunter in the area for many years.