Cow falls through roof, crushes man in Brazil

It would sound like something out of a cartoon if it wasn't so tragic.

A Brazilian man was killed this week after a cow fell through his roof crushing him and nearly killing his wife.

The incident occurred in the town of Caratinga in southeastern Brazil. The one-ton cow stepped onto the asbestos roof of the small home that was clearly built on the slope of a hill.

The grazing cow broke through the ceiling and crushed Joao Maria de Souza, 45, who died a day later in hospital.

The man was apparently doing fine – only suffering a fractured leg – but died after he was unable to see doctors fast enough, his relatives say.

A relative told Brazil's Hoje em Dia newspaper, according to London's Telegraph: "Being crushed by a cow in your bed is the last way you expect to leave this earth.

"But in my view it wasn't the cow that killed our Joao, it was the unacceptable time he spent waiting to be examined."

It is apparently the third such incident in the Minas Gerais region in the past few years.

There were no casualties in the other incidents.