Grandmother found dead by paramedics 4 hours after 999 call
THE family of an 81-yearold grandmother who died at home after waiting more than four hours for paramedics said last night: ‘We are heartbroken.’ By the time an ambulance crew reached Marie Norris last Tuesday she had stopped breathing. Beside her body ‘devastated’ medics found her bags packed, ready to go to hospital.
Mother-of-three Mrs Norris, who lived less than a mile from the ambulance station in Clactonon-Sea, Essex, dialled 999 shortly before 8pm with chest pains.
The East of England Ambulance Service said one of its clinicians made a ‘welfare call’ to the pensioner at 9.47pm, though her family dispute this.
Ambulance chiefs said they couldn’t send a vehicle sooner because of ‘extremely high’ demand and delays at A&E units. The ambulance crew eventually arrived at 11.46pm but had to wait for firefighters to break down the door of her bungalow. They finally went in at 12.21am.
Mrs Norris, a widow, had not called her family or friends for help. ‘She would not have wanted to bother anyone,’ said her son-in-law Brendan Breheny.
He added that she didn’t have a landline at home, only a mobile. Her daughter Linda, 59, found no evidence of the ‘welfare’ call on her phone. She filmed herself checking it and said she found no missed or received calls around 9.47pm.
Linda said: ‘No one called her back and spoke to her, no one has apologised to us, they have not even contacted us.
‘She was fit as a fiddle. We don’t know what to do at all. We’re all heartbroken.’
Mrs Norris moved into her bun- galow after her husband Fred, a painter and decorator, died in 2009 after more than 50 years of marriage.
Friends said she was thoroughly enjoying life in recent months. In November, she went on holiday to Norfolk, with her neighbour, Jenny Spalding.
Mrs Spalding, also 81, said: ‘This is a terrible shock. I’d only just seen her on the Thursday before Christmas because we went line-dancing together.’
She spent Christmas with her daughter Maxine, a retired secretary with Coutts bank. She also has a son, Peter.
Other neighbours said they’d last seen her in recent days vacuuming her Citroen car and that she’d not complained of any health worries.
Mr Breheny, 56, said: ‘We don’t know when she died or what she died from. We have to wait for the coroner’s report. We didn’t know anything was wrong until 9.30am on January 3 when a policeman knocked on the door.’
East of England Ambulance Service has launched an internal investigation and apologised. It said the service is stretched and staff under pressure.
Dave Powell, of the GMB union, said: ‘The paramedics who responded are devastated because they’re not in the job to find people dead, they’re in the job to help people and keep them alive. The Government has got to wake up to this crisis.’