Woman took photo of cows before she was trampled to death

A woman sent a picture of cows in a field to her mother moments before she was trampled to death, an inquest has heard.

Rebekah Morris had been walking her dog in fields off Riverside Way in Littlethorpe, Leicestershire, on the evening of 9 July 2022 when she sent the image with the caption “cowz”.

A jury inquest, which began on Monday at Leicester Town Hall, was told the 29-year-old’s family, worrying at a lack of replies to their messages, went to the area to find her fatally injured.

The inquest heard farmer Guy Hutton and other residents gave her CPR before emergency services arrived, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Forensic pathologist Michael Biggs told the inquest that Ms Morris – known to family and friends as Becki – had “hoofprints” to her chest and shoulder, and suffered an injury to her liver, which led to her death from internal bleeding.

Initial calls to emergency services were that a woman had been attacked or strangled, a paramedic who attended the scene told the hearing, but Dr Biggs’s post-mortem examination found no evidence of another person’s involvement.

He said: “The nature of the injuries and the severity of them are too excessive to have been caused by another person, they are consistent with a large heavy creature such as a cow.”

He added the number of injuries was “not so large” that he believed the whole herd had been involved, and instead thought it was a “relatively brief incident involving one cow”.

Toxicology reports showed Ms Morris had “social level” alcohol in her system alongside her prescribed medication, but Dr Biggs said any impact on her would have been “mild”.

Prior to the hearing, David Morris – Ms Morris’s father – said his daughter was “the sort of person that lit up the room when she walked into it”.

He said: “She was a wonderful, lovely girl. She was kind, had compassion, and always had a listening ear for anyone.”

The inquest continues.