On Sunday, Texas woman Christine Rollins was reportedly killed by a herd of feral hogs.
Rollins, a caretaker of an elderly couple, was walking into the couple’s rural home when she was attacked by the wild hogs.
“Christine Rollins steered her white sedan toward the rural Texas home and parked it just a few steps away from the front door,” a report from The New York Times said. “She stepped out of the car, locked it and prepared to head into the house, where she worked as a caretaker for an older couple.”
But the short walk from her car to the house was never completed.
Authorities can find “no other explanation” for Ms. Rollins’ death, according to the Times, though an investigation is still ongoing into the caretaker’s death.
A medical examiner ruled the 59-year-old’s cause of death to be “exsanguination,” which means severe blood loss, “due to feral hog assault.”
“It was like nothing we’d ever seen,” Sheriff Brian C. Hawthorne of Chambers County said Tuesday, according to Houston-based NBC-affiliated KPRC-TV. “No doubt in my mind that it was multiple animals and we can tell that from the different sizes of the bites.”
“I’m not going to discuss it,” Sheriff Hawthorne said of the crime scene. “There (are) too many families involved. But in my 35 years, I will tell you it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”
It is believed the elderly couple’s dogs ran off the hogs before Ms. Rollins’ body was found, KPRC-TV noted.
“Sheriff Hawthorne said it was clear from her injuries that Ms. Rollins had fought back against the hogs,” the Times report said. “He said it was impossible to know exactly how many had attacked her, but that there had been more than one, based on the varying sizes of her bite wounds.”
Ms. Rollins was set to celebrate her 60th birthday on Christmas.
“The way it happened was just shocking,” Tony Sandles Jr., Rollins’ son-in-law, told KPRC-TV. “It was just a tragic way to find out she passed away. Her birthday is Christmas Day, she was supposed to be turning 60 so we were preparing to get ready for that day.”
“She would not only give you the shirt off her back but also the pants as well. She was just that type of person,” said Sandles Jr.
“We just got to keep our head up and pray about it. Keep God first and we all get through it,” the son-in-law added.
Sheriff Hawthorne noted that the death Ms. Rollins suffered is extremely rare, only finding a few similar reports of death within the United States.
“I don’t how many we’ve had in Texas,” the sheriff said. “I hope we never have another one in Chambers County.”
According to John J. McGlone, a professor of animal behavior at Texas Tech University, the Times noted, if someone is encountered by aggressive feral hogs, “they should try to make as much noise as possible to scare them off, and get to a safe place.”
