Boy killed by falling sacrificial goat

A 13-year-old Turkish boy was killed instantly when he was hit on the head by a sacrificial goat that had jumped off the roof of a building in a bid to escape. Heval Yildirim was killed instantly when he was hit by the sacrificial goat that had been bought to the home in the province of Diyarbakir in south-eastern Turkey by the teenager's father to celebrate Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice.

Police said the boy had been playing with friends in front of the building and was just unlucky in being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the goat had decided to try and make its escape. Mehmet Yildirim, the boy's father, said he had brought the goat into town to sacrifice during the festival but could not find anywhere suitable to keep it in advance of the event itself, and so placed the animal on the roof of their apartment on the sixth floor.



However the goat had tried to escape and apparently jumped over a security fence around the rooftop area, dropping six floors to hit the young man on the head. Both the goat and the boy were killed. Dad Mehmet said: "I am devastated but what more can I say? In fact there is nothing at all to say." Police admitted that they were making enquiries into the death but added that it was unprecedented, and said it was the first case anyone had ever heard of.

The Feast of the Sacrifice is celebrated by Muslims worldwide each year and honours the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his promised son, Ishmael, as an act of submission to God's command, before God then intervened to provide Abraham with a lamb to sacrifice instead. The goat, like the hundreds of thousands of other animals due to be sacrificed for the feast, was supposed to have been cut up into three parts one third for the family, one third to relatives and friends, and the remaining third given to the poor.