Death of motorcyclist contributed to by ambulance service neglect, coroner rules

The death of a motorcyclist who had to wait almost an hour for a paramedic to attend the scene of a crash was contributed to by ambulance service neglect, a coroner has ruled.

Aaron Morris, a father-of-five, suffered a cardiac arrest in an ambulance which his wife Samantha was directing to hospital because the driver did not know the way, an inquest in Crook, Co Durham, was told.

Mr Morris, 31, died at the University Hospital of North Durham on July 1 2022 at 6.40pm, after a crash which happened about six hours earlier in Esh Winning.

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His wife, pregnant with twins at the time, was returning from a hospital appointment when she came across the scene of the crash, in which her husband’s Honda motorbike collided with a car at a junction.

During the inquest, coroner Crispin Oliver was told that it took 54 minutes for an ambulance to get to the scene because of high demand.

The North East Ambulance Service target for arrival at the scene was 18 minutes.

Mr Oliver heard during the inquest that one expert rated Mr Morris’s chance of survival as high as 95%, had he been treated in a timely manner.

The coroner also heard that an air ambulance could have been sent to the scene earlier, but that did not happen.

Mr Oliver was also told that a specialist paramedic known as a clinical team leader (CTL) should have gone to the scene, but she did not leave a meeting being held in Stanley.

The coroner said: “It is highly likely that Aaron Morris would have survived had available specialist medical treatment been applied in a timely manner.

“That it was not was due to a) delayed allocation of an ambulance deployed to the scene due to overstretched resources and b) failure of the ambulance service CTL to deploy to the scene at 12.52, when there was certainly enough information for her to do so.”

Mr Oliver concluded: “Aaron Morris died from injuries sustained in a road traffic collision and failure of the response of the ambulance service, contributed to by neglect.”