Prince’s final rescue mission is woman struck by police van

THE Duke of Cambridge finished his career as an ambulance pilot by airlifting to hospital a woman critically injured by a police van that had been sent to help her.

Prince William, who joined the East Anglian Air Ambulance Service in March 2015, worked overtime on his last day, not completing his shift until about 2am yesterday.

His air ambulance crew was in the throes of winding down when a call came in at 11.13pm on Thursday to attend the victim of a crash in the Norfolk village of Hethel, eight miles from Norwich.

The woman, in her 50s, had been reported missing when she was struck by a marked police van – which had been sent to the area in response to an emergency call amid “concerns for her safety” – at around 10.20pm. No one else was injured. Prince William’s air ambulance crew was called and the critical care team treated the woman at the scene for serious head injuries.

She was then airlifted to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, where she remains in a “life-threatening condition”. The prince returned to the air ambulance crew’s base at Cambridge airport at 1.30am.

The helicopter was manoeuvred into its hangar around 2am when he could finally clock off – about half an hour after the nominal end of his shift.

Norfolk Police said it had called in the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) to investigate the case as is required.

The IPCC will need to find out why police officers trying to find the missing woman managed to knock her down and leave her fighting for her life.