Woman, 95, thought she’d die on freezing pavement in stunning 5-hour ambulance wait

A 95-year-old woman was left on the side of a freezing pavement for five hours because of a broken hip, and said she was “going to die here tonight.”

Ambulance chiefs told Winifred Soanes she “was not a priority” after falling over in Dorset on Monday while out her 92-year-old husband Andrew. Despite desperate strangers calling for the emergency services, she ended up waiting for five hours before she received help.

Locals took it up to themselves to her her, by propping her head up with shoe boxes from market stallholders and a pillow from a nearby pub. Meanwhile, staff at Mountain Warehouse provided her with sleeping bags, and charity shops kept her warm by lending blankets and hot water bottles.

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Other caring Samaritans provided coffee and food to help Andrew, who is an army veteran and diabetic and who refused to leave his wife’s side. At 7.45pm, an ambulance eventually arrived and took the elderly woman to hospital where she currently remains admitted.

However, Andrew developed a chest infection as a result of being out in the cold so long and cannot visit his wife in hospital.

Jennifer Baylis, who was working in a charity shop, said: “I can’t tell you how upsetting it was, she actually said ‘I’m going to die here tonight’. She was in a phenomenal amount of pain and in such a vulnerable position, on a cold floor, totally reliant on complete strangers. She fell at 2.30pm and the ambulance finally showed up at 7.45pm.

“We were all distressed that there was no first responder available, no police officer, literally no one available to help for over five hours. You feel so helpless, I was so angry that they were in this position. It shouldn’t be happening in this day and age.

“The NHS are fantastic once help is there. We know how hard they work. But something went very very wrong to leave a 95-year-old lady on the pavement of a high street at night.’

David Lovell was the first to call for an ambulance. He said: “I can’t describe how cold it was, and as it got dark, the temperature dropped really quickly. She was lying on the cold pavement and we couldn’t move her because she was in huge amounts of pain.”

A spokesperson for the South Western Ambulance Service, said: “We are sorry that we were not able to provide a timely response to this patient. Any occasion where the care we provide falls below the high standards our patients deserve and rightly expect is unacceptable.

“Handover delays at emergency departments remain one of our biggest challenges. To ensure our ambulances are available to attend the next emergency call within the community, we need to be able to hand patients over within the 15 minute national target. We continue to work hard with our partners in the NHS and social care, to do all we can to improve the service that patients receive.”