Wayne’s death is ‘a dark tragedy’
WOMAN CHARGED WITH MURDER
THE SHOCKING death of Wayne McQuillan has been described as ‘a dark tragedy’ that has left a local community devastated.
Mourners packed the Holy Family Church for his funeral mass at which Fr Tony Gonoude said that the new year had been ‘shrouded in darkness’ for Wayne’s family.
Paula Farrell from Rathmullen Park was charged with his murder last week and is due to appear in Dundalk this Wednesday.
EMERGENCY SERVICES in Drogheda have been left frustrated and confused at the handling of the new year’s eve fatal stabbing in Rathmullen Park, which saw gardaí driving the victim to hospital when an ambulance still hadn’t arrived after 25 minutes.
There were three ambulances on other calls in Drogheda at the time of Wayne McQuillan’s stabbing and a fourth responded from Ardee.
Local paramedics have expressed concern at lack of staff and resources, while Drogheda-based firefighters have queried why they were not contacted as trained first responders.
‘Once again this falls on us, when it is really down to lack of manpower from cuts,’ said a source within the ambulance service.
One local firefighter expressed his outrage at what happened, saying more joined-up thinking is needed.
‘How come the Fire Service weren't sent to the scene to render First Aid?’ he asked angrily.
‘All Fire Service personnel are trained as Emergency First Responders and an Emergency Medical Technician. It’s just not acceptable to have no ambulance and no crew available to respond to such a serious incident in time – it’s the same as
How come the Fire Service weren’t sent to render first aid?
doing nothing at all.’
Confusion still reigns over the official number of ambulances available to Drogheda on the tragic night.
An initial statement from the HSE confirmed the ambulance tasked to deal with Mr. McQuillan was the nearest to the scene – but refused to say where it was when first called.
The statement read: ‘National Ambulance Service can confirm that the crew responding to the call was the nearest available resource at the time and all other crews in the area were attending to emergency calls. The NAS responds to calls on a prioritised basis. This prioritisation of calls is achieved via the Advanced Medical Priority Dispatch System which is in operation in all national Ambulance Service Command and Control Centres’.
A statement to local Minister Fergus O’Dowd said NAS Ambulance Control received a call from a member of the public via 999/112 at 01.46 on January 1.
It said: ‘ The caller requested ambulance assistance in the Rathmullan Park area of Drogheda.
‘At the time both ambulances from Drogheda had been committed to and were at the scene of two other separate incidents.
‘Ambulance Control dispatched the nearest available ambulance which was mobile toward the scene at 01.50.
‘ That ambulance was dispatched from Ardee and was at the scene at 02.11, when they advised Ambulance Control that the patient had been removed to hospital by the gardaí. The ambulance was then stood down’.
A later statement to the local TD said there were three ambulances on call in Drogheda, out of ten in the North East.
A spokesman told Deputy O’Dowd that ‘ three were in Drogheda, a fourth was in Ardee’.
‘I’ve been told there were ten ambulances on that night in the north east, and even with almost half the complement of ambulances available to Drogheda, that poor man died,’ Deputy O’Dowd told the Drogheda Independent. ‘There are serious questions to be answered – which I have already put to Minister O’Reilly – as this is not the first time this has happened in Drogheda, but it must be the last.’