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Man gored to death at Pamplona, 1st since '95
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-10 19:42 PAMPLONA, Spain: A charging bull gored a young man to death Friday at Pamplona's San Fermin festival, the first such fatality in nearly 15 years. Nine others were injured in a particularly dangerous and chaotic chapter of the running of the bulls. The San Fermin festival Web site said the unidentified man was gored in the neck and lung during a run in which a rogue bull separated from the pack, which is among the worst things that can happen at Spain's most popular fiesta.
Photographs showed the man lying on a stretcher moments after the goring, his face and neck stained with blood and his eyes only half-open. An emergency medical worker is leaning over him, applying what appears to be gauze to his neck wound. Three other people were gored, and six people suffered bumps, bruises and other lesser injuries, said Fernando Boneta, director of Virgen del Camino Hospital.
Friday's death raises to 15 the toll since record-keeping began in 1924. Fatalities are relatively rare and when one occurs, it serves as a reminder that amid all the street parties and revelry associated with San Fermin, running with fighting bulls weighing 1,300 pounds (600 kilos) or more on cobblestone streets packed with humanity is a life-risking exercise. The man killed was carrying no identification, but he might be Spanish, judging from a Spanish-language inscription on a ring he was wearing, Pamplona mayor Yolanda Barcina said. Britain's Mirror, citing local news media, says the victim is a British man. This run, the fourth of eight held at San Fermin, was by far the most perilous of this year's festival. The last three runs were comparatively placid affairs, with no serious injuries. The six bulls covering the half-mile (850-meter) course with six accompanying steers tend to mind their own business and keep running as long as they stay in a pack. A bull that gets separated is more likely to get frightened and aggressive, and that is what happened Friday. A brown, 1,130-pound (515-kilogram) bull named Cappuccino fell early in the run and ended up on its own. When it reached a stretch right outside the bullring that marks the end of the course, it started charging right and left, and even ran back the wrong way several times. Runners scurried for safety to wooden barriers along the route as the bull attacked. Herders waving sticks tried in vain to guide it into the ring, even yanking on the animal's tail to turn it around. This went on for a minute and a half, which is a long time at San Fermin. At one point the bull picked one man up with its horns and flipped him into the air, then kept going after him as he lay curled up on the ground, covering his face. But this man got up and ran away, and was apparently not seriously hurt. Cappuccino is the bull behind Friday's fatality, although this happened in a slightly earlier stretch of the route, said one of the herders, Humberto Miguel. "It was a light bull. Its charges were not particularly strong but it moved very fast from left to right," he told The Associated Press. "Of the whole pack, it was the one that gave us the most trouble." The bulls used in Friday's run, from a ranch called Jandilla, have a reputation for being fierce at San Fermin. They hold the record for the most gorings in a single run, eight, one day in 2004. |
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