Rail rescue for missing patient

RESCUERS saved a missing dementia patient after she was found wandering on the East Coast rail line at 4am.

The woman in her 80s was reported missing after a home alarm triggered when she left her house in Berwickshire seven hours earlier.

Police began searching the area in Ayton, near Eyemouth, and she was found when a search and rescue helicopter’s infra-red imaging system picked up a heat source next to the East Coast Main Line.

A mountain rescue team contacted police to stop the trains for half an hour while they were directed to the missing woman by the helicopter.

Rescue team leader Stuart Fuller-Shapcott said: ‘The East Coast Main Line is very dangerous, so I wasn’t letting my guys on until I had a cast-iron guarantee it was closed. How she had got up there is a mystery – she walked with a pair of sticks.

‘We took her down the embankment, transferred her to an ambulance and she was taken to Borders General Hospital for observation.’