A coroner has concluded that the death of a 31-year-old motorcyclist was partly caused by a failure in the response time of the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS), after it took almost an hour for an ambulance to reach the scene of a crash.
Aaron Morris died approximately six hours after his motorbike collided with a car on 1 July 2022 in Esh Winning, near Durham. Despite the severity of the crash, it took 54 minutes for emergency services to arrive, well beyond the NEAS target of 18 minutes for response times.
During the inquest at Crook in County Durham, Coroner Crispin Oliver heard evidence that Mr. Morris’s chance of survival could have been as high as 95% had he received medical treatment promptly. Expert testimony revealed that his chances were drastically reduced due to the delay in care.
In addition to the ambulance delay, the coroner was told that an air ambulance could have been deployed but was not. There was also a failure to send a clinical team leader (CTL), a specialist paramedic trained to deal with such emergencies, to the scene. These factors, the coroner said, contributed to Mr. Morris’s death.
“It is highly likely that Aaron Morris would have survived had available specialist medical treatment been applied in a timely manner,” Coroner Oliver said in his conclusion. He described the delay in treatment as a result of “overstretched resources” and “neglect” in the response to the incident.
The inquest also heard a heart-wrenching account from Mrs. Morris, who came across the scene of the crash while returning from a hospital appointment. The coroner detailed how Mr. Morris went into cardiac arrest during the ambulance journey to the hospital, and his wife had to direct the driver to the hospital as the ambulance crew was unfamiliar with the route.
Mrs. Morris later expressed her gratitude for the transparency shown by NEAS and other parties during the inquest. In a statement following the findings, she said: “I want to now focus on my children and moving forwards.”
Dr. Kat Noble, medical director of NEAS, offered an unreserved apology for the delays and acknowledged that the service had failed to provide the appropriate care. “We accept that opportunities were missed to deploy a clinical team leader to this incident,” she said. Dr. Noble also assured the public that NEAS had taken corrective actions in response to the investigation.
Samantha Morris, Aaron’s widow, expressed her appreciation for the steps taken by the ambulance service to address the issues raised during the inquest. She added that despite the tragic circumstances, she would now feel confident in calling 999 for an NEAS ambulance, which she had not felt before.
The coroner’s findings shed light on the impact of overstretched emergency services and the critical importance of timely medical intervention, especially in life-threatening situations like road traffic accidents.
