LONDON - A British wildlife artist who made a career of depicting Africa's fauna has been gored to death by a buffalo in Kenya, his family said Wednesday. Simon Combes, 64, was out on an evening walk in a reserve of the Great Rift Valley with his wife Kat and their friend, cheetah expert Mary Wykstra, when attacked. "It was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time," his daughter Cindy, 36, said, describing the area as a place Combes had grown up in and knew intimately.
The attack only lasted some 10 seconds but "seemed like a lifetime which in fact it was for him", until the two women threw things at the buffalo and scared it off, she said.
| "Shoo! Shoo, I say! Get off that nice man!" |
Combes moved to Kenya from England five years ago and often worked for animal conservation groups, his daughter said. In a 30-year career, Combes won fame for creating some of the world's best painting of wildlife, including close-up sketches of Bengal tigers in India and even a painting of an African buffalo similar to the one that killed him.
| "Lissen, bub, me and the boys don't like the way you painted Henry. You'd better lay off or else. Try painting an English sparrow." |
His first wife, Susie Combes, said an air ambulance took two hours to reach the site of the attack, and that Combes died at the scene.
| Kenyan buffaloes -- why did they hate him? |
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