A 34-year-old Briton has been shot dead by a hunter as he sped down a wooded track on a mountain bike in the French Alps, reports The Guardian.
The victim, understood to be Marc Sutton from Caerphilly, was a restaurant owner who had been living for several years in the small resort town of Les Gets.
Sutton ran a private catering business in the area and opened his own restaurant, Wild Beets Kitchen, earlier this year.
He was shot on Saturday evening as a hunting party beat its way through woods near the ski resort of Montriond, according to a local prosecutor quoted by the Associated Press.
The victim was “perfectly identifiable” and was on a well-used but hard-to-access mountain track when he was shot by a 22-year-old hunter, who was taken to hospital in shock.
An inquiry has been launched for aggravated manslaughter, the prosecutor said.
A spokeswoman for the UK Foreign Office said: “We are in contact with the local authorities about the death of a British man in France, and we are providing assistance to his family.”
A local newspaper, Le Dauphiné Libéré, reported that the accident had happened at about 6pm on Saturday during a seven-man hunt organised by the local hunting association.
The victim reportedly died from a single gunshot wound. The man who shot him had not been arrested or charged. The public prosecutor, Philippe Toccanier from nearby Thonon-les-Bains, ordered local gendarmes to secure the scene and recover any available evidence.