A slaughterman shot dead during the mass cull of livestock was "the most loving man in the world".

His fiancee told The Argus Steven Smart was a wonderful man and would have been a "fantastic father".

Carina Weston said she thought it was a joke when she received a phone call saying Steven, 27, had been shot with a captive bolt gun. He was taken to hospital with head injuries but died 24 hours later.

Miss Weston said: "How could this happen to such a wonderful man? It's a waste."

Steven had travelled to Cumbria to help with the cull of animals due to the foot-and-mouth crisis.

He was earning £150 a day working 12-hour days at a former airfield site in Great Orton with a group of slaughtermen, including three former colleagues.

Steven and the three men had worked at a slaughter house, Invicta Meat in Lamberhurst, Kent, for eight years before being laid off due to the foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Miss Weston, 31, said: "He took the job in Cumbria soon after being laid off and seemed to be getting along fine. He would ring me every evening to tell me how he was getting on. He said they were having a good laugh up there and that they were a nice group of people."

Miss Weston, who works as a credit controller, said she had last spoken to her fiance on Tuesday when he had finished work early and was preparing for a night down the pub with work mates.

She said: "I received a call on Wednesday saying Steven had been shot in the head but at first I thought it was all a joke.

"I just couldn't believe it."

Speaking from the home of her mother, Sandra Weston, in Hastings, Miss Weston sobbed as she looked at a picture of Steven.

She said: "This has devastated us all. I just cannot take it in. One minute he was on the other end of a phone, the next he is dead. You just don't know what is round the corner."

The couple met on Valentine's Day three years ago at Saturdays nightclub in the Old Town, Hastings.

She said: "He kept eyeing me up from a distance. He was such a funny man. I couldn't stop laughing when I was with him."

The couple bought a three-bedroom house in Bexhill Road, St Leonards, where Mr Smart, a keen angler who was originally from Hurst Green, spent hours tending the back garden.

l Keith Hubbard, 37, of Mancetter, Atherstone, Warwickshire, appeared before magistrates yesterday charged with murder. He was remanded in custody until April 12 at Carlisle Magistrates Court.