Mom of 5 Fatally Wounded After Throwing Chicken Nuggets with Pet Dogs

A mother of five reportedly died after being bitten while her dogs fought over food that she was giving them, an inquest has heard.

Michelle Hempstead, 34, of Essex, England, died in a local hospital on July 30, 2024, after her dog bit her upper arm and caught an artery, according to Sky News, the BBC and the Independent.

On Monday, Sept. 29, an inquest heard that Hempstead had been throwing chicken nuggets in the air at her home on July 29 when the incident occurred, per the BBC.

Essex senior coroner Lincoln Brookes noted to the court that the victim had a Pomeranian dog called Pom and a mastiff rottweiler cross, Trigg, per Sky News.

Brookes said that after Pom “had a go at Trigg,” the rottweiler Trigg “did go to bite him or snap at him, and this is a big dog with big jaws,” the publication further noted.

PEOPLE reached out to the Essex Coroner’s Court and the Essex Police for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

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He added that despite the incident, the dogs were “quite well behaved” and Trigg was “an otherwise gentle giant.”

Although Hempstead was taken to the hospital, she died from multiple organ failures, which were caused by the blood loss. Her partner, Samuel West, told the court that Hempstead had bought the chicken nuggets from McDonald’s.

“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,” West said.

He added that as Pom went to get the nugget, “Trigg’s done this thing where he chomps his mouth”.

“It looked like to me it wasn’t a grab,” he continued. “He just went to do a chomping thing and caught her under the arm.”

West went on to say that Trigg was  “docile”, and “loved [Hempstead] to death, and didn’t have a bad bone in his body,” per the BBC.

“You didn’t have to worry about him with anything, he wasn’t vicious in any way, shape or form,” he said.

He added that Trigg would sleep on Hempstead’s bed and she would even feed him food from her mouth.

West described the incident as an “absolute freak accident,” per Sky News.

“Michelle Hempstead died of the consequences of traumatic blood loss following a single bite from her large dog in her home, which severed an artery,” Essex senior coroner Lincoln Brookes told the court, according to the publication.

“The bite was not malicious and occurred when she was caught during a brief fight between her two dogs over food,” he added.

Brookes continued: “The double tragedy about this is that she [Ms Hempstead] 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,” he further noted.

Authorities previously said the dogs had been taken from the property and “disclaimed for destruction,” Sky News reported.

In a letter read out in court, Hempstead’s mother, Karen, described her daughter as “loving, resilient, not afraid to speak her mind, hard working, caring, extremely brave, resourceful, generous,” according to the BBC.