A dog walker was trampled to death by stampeding cows after straying onto an unofficial country path, an inquest has heard.
Allison Payne, 55, died after walking her dog through a farmer’s field of aggressive cows in West Sussex near where she lived.
There were no witnesses to the incident in August 2022, an inquest jury was told.
Ms Payne often walked her dog, Penny, around fields surrounding the village near Horsham and would take the route she was walking when she died ‘at least weekly’.
She was walking the Staffordshire bull terrier on the morning of August 22 in a field with around 20 cows, each with calves around five months old.
A passer-by later found Penny without Ms Payne and posted a missing dog appeal on social media.
Ms Payne was found in the field off Rowner Road, near Billinghurst, where she was treated by paramedics and air ambulance crews. However, she was pronounced dead at the scene.
The inquest in Horsham heard the field had two paths in it, an official public footpath and ‘unofficial’ footpath which had been worn in by foot traffic.
The court also heard that she ‘could have been running away from her original location from the stampeding cattle’.
A post-mortem examination gave Ms Payne’s cause of death as a result of multiple internal injuries and her being ‘trampled upon by cows’.
