Ambulance delay contributed to husband’s death, says 28-year-old widow

A woman, widowed at 28, has expressed her anguish, stating that her motorcyclist husband’s life could have been preserved following a collision if not for a delayed ambulance response. Aaron Morris, 31, passed away approximately six hours subsequent to a car collision that occurred on 1 July 2022, in Esh Winning, County Durham. Samantha Morris, his widow, conveyed her feeling of “pain and sadness” over not having held his hand despite being present with him, as she was unaware of the severity of his condition. The North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) stated that following Mr Morris’ death, it had assimilated lessons and implemented “a number of actions.” An inquest conducted last week in Crook, County Durham, revealed that an ambulance took 54 minutes to reach the incident site, attributed to elevated demand. The inquest also heard that Mr Morris’ probability of survival would have been approximately 95% if he had received earlier medical attention. Nevertheless, a specialist paramedic, identified as a clinical team leader (CTL), was not dispatched to the collision. Mrs. Morris, who was expecting twins when her husband passed away, commented: “I shouldn’t be a single parent to three children, that wasn’t the plan. I shouldn’t be widowed at 28. “There’s a lot of pain and sadness, especially at this time of year, coming up to Christmas.” She recounted to the BBC how she inadvertently encountered the crash site while on her way back from a hospital appointment. She stated: “I saw there was an accident on the road, picked up my phone to call Aaron to say I was going to stop and see if they needed a hand. But then I looked again and saw it was Aaron.” “I thought he’d broken a few ribs and obviously had some internal injuries, but I thought… ‘it doesn’t really matter what’s wrong with him, when he gets to the hospital they’ll fix him’.” Unaware of the critical nature of her husband’s condition, she mentioned dedicating time to assist the ambulance crew. She explained: “I did not know he was going to die and instead of holding his hand while the paramedics worked on him, I was running for equipment, I was running for scissors, I was cutting his clothes.” Coroner Crispin Oliver determined that it was “highly likely” Mr Morris, who experienced a cardiac arrest, would have survived if accessible specialist medical treatment had been administered in a “timely manner.” Dr. Kat Noble, medical director for NEAS, stated that the service “unreservedly apologised.” She added: “We accept that opportunities were missed to deploy a clinical team leader to this incident.” “The service fully accepts the coroner’s findings and has taken a number of actions as a result of its investigations.” Mrs. Morris expressed finding solace in the ambulance service’s acknowledgment of lessons learned from her husband’s fatality. She remarked: “They looked at every single thing that went wrong that day, including the way the calls were handled and retrained staff,” adding, “Every mistake that was made, they have looked at in-depth and made a change for every single one.” “They’ve totally rebooted the system to try and make sure it never happens again.” Her primary focus now, she stated, is “remembering the good times with Aaron,” further commenting: “I want to smile and have happiness in our lives.”