Woman gets accidentally strangled to death by dog leads as she walks her dogs

An inquest was heard on Thursday, regarding a woman from Wrexham, North Wales who was fatally injured while walking her own dogs on July 8. Deborah Roberts, 47, had been walking her two Staffordshire bull terriers when she was thought to have stumbled and got strangled to death by her two dogs pulling on their leads.

The mother-of-four suffers from Huntington's Disease, which is an inherited degenerative condition that led to the woman's deteriorating mobility. She was on her usual morning walk with her dogs and is believed to have stumbled and struggled possibly due to her illness. The terriers were on two rope leads and are believed to have begun pulling on them in an effort to get their owner up on her feet.

This may have caused the leads to wrap around her neck as they tried to help her up. Roberts was found face down on a patch of grassland with the dogs next to her.

The coroner cited and concluded the findings as a tragic case of a freak accident. The coroner was also told that Roberts usually placed the leads around her neck while the dogs are off the leash and not normally in the way it would be attached to a dog.

At the inquest, the woman's sons told the hearing that the dogs Tyson and Ruby were loving and caring pets.

"They are beautiful dogs. If you met them now they'd just jump up and lick you. All they were doing is trying to help my mum when she fell", her son Robert said.

Her other son Callum, said his mother had been walking the dogs along with his young cousin who raised the alarm on the accident after which two workmen rushed to help the woman.

Statements from the workers said the two dogs were pulling backwards and the force of the dogs was causing the body to move. The choke areas which go around the dog's necks were wrapped around Roberts' neck as the dogs kept whimpering. They both confirmed that the woman was already unconscious at the time.

According to the BBC, assistant coroner David Pojur said she "may have stumbled" but "we don't know" why she had the leads around her neck.

Pojur recorded the cause of death as asphyxiation caused by strangulation by a lead.