Daniel Jimeno Romero, a 27-year-old runner from Madrid is the first person to die in the Sanfermines since 1995.
The accident occurred during the fourth ‘encierro’ and during the same run, ten people were injured, eight of them by bulls’ horns.
The victim was gored in the neck by a bull called Capuchino on the last stretch of the run which took four minutes and a half.
AP reports:
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.
Cappuccino, a brown, 1,130-pound (515-kilogram) specimen, 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.”
CNN inserts a “do you think this tradition should be banned?” question in its report.
And the Spanish television Cuatro exploits the video with and ad of OPEL.
Yes, making money with a tragedy.
What a shame!
Picture by EFE.