JUST IN: Mother of five k!lled by her own pet Rottweiler which bit her while fighting Pomeranian for McDonald’s chicken nuggets

A mother of five from Southend, United Kingdom, has died after being bitten by her dog while the animal fought with another pet over food, an inquest has heard.

Michelle Hempstead, 34, was in her flat on July 29 last year tossing chicken nuggets to her two dogs, a Pomeranian named Pom and a mastiff-rottweiler cross called Trigg, when the larger animal snapped at the smaller one. In the struggle, Trigg’s jaws caught Ms Hempstead’s arm, severing an artery.

She was rushed to hospital but died the following day after suffering catastrophic blood loss that led to multiple organ failure.

The tragedy came only weeks after the family endured another devastating loss, the death of Ms Hempstead’s daughter. Senior coroner Lincoln Brookes said: “The double tragedy about this is that she and the rest of her family suffered a terrible bereavement only a few weeks beforehand, of the death of her daughter. She was still reeling from that.”

At the Chelmsford inquest, her partner Samuel West explained that Ms Hempstead had brought home McDonald’s food. “She had a box of, I think, 20 nuggets,” he said. “She liked to throw them up in the air and the little one, Pom, was going for the big one, not aggressively but he used to growl and snap when he wanted to get the nugget first.”

He said that as Pom leapt for food, “Trigg’s done this thing where he chomps his mouth” and caught Ms Hempstead by accident. “It looked to me like it wasn’t a grab,” he told the court, describing it as an “absolute freak accident.” He added that Trigg “didn’t have a bad bone in his body” and had always been a gentle dog who even slept on Ms Hempstead’s bed.

Police bodycam footage captured West saying that she had “thrown the nugget up in the air – she was just caught in the crossfire.”

Coroner Brookes accepted that both dogs were “quite well behaved” and described Trigg as “an otherwise gentle giant.” He concluded that the death was accidental, remarking: “The bite was not malicious and occurred when she was caught during a brief fight between her two dogs over food.”

Following the incident, both dogs were seized from the property and later “disclaimed for destruction” as Ms Hempstead had been their sole owner.