‘My son was lying hurt in the gutter but trainee 999 woman wasn’t allowed to treat or even move him’

ONE father was astonished to learn the ambulance worker who responded when his son was hit by a car could not treat or even move the injured child.

Richard Otley described how 11-year-old Robert was left lying in the gutter as they desperately waited for an ambulance to arrive.

Army reservist Captain Otley, 50, said it was only later that he learned the crew member could not have treated or moved his son. He did not realise immediately as the ambulance arrived after a number of off-duty paramedics, a GP and a nurse.

The accident happened in Watten, Caithness, about 4pm on August 24, after Robert got off the bus from Wick High School and stepped from behind it into the path of a car.

Capt Otley, an officer in 7 Scots, raced to the scene after neighbours alerted him.

He said of the ambulance worker: ‘Through no fault of her own, she wasn’t allowed to treat or move the patient.

‘She turned up dressed as a paramedic, driving an ambulance. So one automatically assumes, right, you’ve got a paramedic, you’ve got an ambulance. What we didn’t know was that had that been on an isolated road, and she had turned up on her own, she couldn’t do anything. It makes me feel that we are extremely vulnerable.’

Capt Otley believed the ambulance, which came from Bettyhill, Sutherland, 42 miles away, took 75 minutes to reach them but the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) claims it was just over 40 minutes.

An SAS spokesman said it received a call from an off-duty paramedic. A GP who was closer than the nearest ambulance had been dispatched and arrived within 15 minutes. Then an ambulance arrived and transferred the patient safely to Caithness General Hospital.