Woman dies in car crash with boar as Rome’s cull plan stalls

A MOTHER died after her car collided with a wild boar weeks after authorities in Rome promised a mass cull that is yet to begin.

Marisa Verdirose, a 55-year-old supermarket assistant, was in the Citroen with her husband and two sons on Wednesday night when a large female boar emerged from the shadows and their vehicle hit it, local media reported.

“I saw the car fly, and she was thrown out,” a witness told La Stampa newspaper. “Her son was saying to her: ‘Mum, please, don’t die’.”

Last month, authorities vowed to destroy 50,000 boars this year – but so far not a single one has been killed.

According to the Osservatorio Asap, an organisation that monitors road traffic accidents, animals in Italy cause a car accident every 41 hours – and two out of three of those collisions involve a wild boar.

In the past year, 13 people have died and 261 have been severely wounded in car accidents that involved wild animals.

Wild boar have become an increasingly common sight in populated areas across the country and videos of them walking across zebra crossings or strolling calmly through hospital grounds have gone viral.

Their presence in urban areas began to make headlines in 2020, when pandemic lockdowns emptied city centres and emboldened them to explore.

They have since proliferated because inadequate waste collection in large cities means food is readily available. They have also been forced, by the drought that has struck the country, to seek sources of water in built-up areas.

A swine flu outbreak in May prompted officials in Rome to plan a mass cull, ban picnics and fence off rubbish bins where the disease was found.