Stab victim taken to hospital in police car due to ambulance delay fears

Jordan Adkins, who works at a nightclub, was one of the first to treat the victim

A man with stab wounds was driven to hospital in the back of a police car because officers thought it would take too long for an ambulance to arrive, first responders have said.

Jordan Adkins said: "He should have been in an ambulance where he could have had pain medication."

He said police called to Evesham, Worcestershire, had been told an ambulance could take an hour to arrive.

West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) said a paramedic officer had been en route to the scene when the decision had been made to take the patient to hospital in the car.

Mr Adkins, who works at a nightclub in the town, was one of the first to treat the man after the attack on 26 September.

He said: "If he was left there for an hour... the amount of blood that could potentially have been lost could have been devastating.

"The idea was just to get a police car empty and pad his wounds as much as possible, make the gent comfortable and get in the car and blue-light him to Redditch," he said.

Donna Adkins said the man had lost a lot of blood

Mr Adkins added: "He spent 20 minutes in a car laid across a car seat when he should have been in a bed."

Fellow first-aider and Mr Adkins' mother Donna Adkins said she had seen "quite a substantial stab wound to his abdomen".

She added: "The best we could do was patch him up, hold him together, get compression on it and get him to the hospital as soon as possible."

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In a statement, WMAS said: "We were called to reports of a stabbing on a bridge near to Port Street, in Evesham, at 00:49 on Sunday morning.

"A paramedic officer was en route to the scene when, eight minutes after the original call, control were informed by police that they were going to transport the patient to hospital.

"Two minutes after that, an ambulance became clear in Evesham that would have been able to respond to the incident."

Last week it was reported ambulances were being diverted to ease pressures on hospitals in Worcestershire.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust's chief operating officer, Paul Brennan, said the scheme had been agreed with WMAS which has recently reported its own problems with increased demand, handling more than 6,500 calls in its busiest ever day.

Paramedics have spoken about a "relentless" front line, with long waits to offload patients at hospital and increasing numbers of callouts.

A 42-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder in connection with the stabbing in Evesham and has been remanded in custody to appear at Worcester Crown Court next month.