A four-year-old boy suffered a broken pelvis and a head injury after he was hit by a car in a city street.
Little Jacob Burnside was hospitalised with a three-inch gash to his head, a broken leg and the pelvis injury after being struck by a car in Inverness’s Springfield Gardens.
The ambulance service last night admitted that they did not respond as quickly as they “would have liked” after it emerged Jacob waited 21 minutes for an ambulance.
Last night, after he was flown from his home city to hospital in Aberdeen for specialist treatment, police detained a 33-year-old man in connection with the incident.
Medics at Raigmore Hospital told his mother, Jacqueline Burnside, that her son was “very lucky to be alive.”
The 34-year-old mother-of-three said: “The doctors don’t know how he survived this. He is going to be seen by a specialist doctor and needs to be in Aberdeen.”
Jacob was one of five or six children playing outside a block of flats at his mother’s home in Springfield Gardens when he was knocked down after running onto the road.
Yesterday at the scene, a yellow chalk outline marked where the boy had been left lying on the road.
Police Sergeant Donnie Mackinnon, of the road policing unit, said: “I can confirm a 33-year-old man has been detained and is assisting with our inquiries.”
A police spokesman confirmed last night that the boy’s injuries are “serious” but “not thought to be life-threatening”.
An ambulance service spokesman confirmed the ambulance took 21 minutes to arrive after the call was made at 7.47pm on Tuesday night. He added that the “nearest available ambulance” was dispatched as local crews were attending to patients with “immediately life-threatening conditions,” which meant they could not respond as quickly as they “would have liked.”
Ambulances in NHS Highland are expected to reach 75% of category A incidents, defined as “immediately life threatening,” within eight minutes of a 999 call.
The spokesman added that one of their clinical advisors tried, but was unable to, contact the 999 caller in that time to ensure there was no change in the boy’s condition.
In March last year, 16-year-old Keiran McKandie, from Miltonduff, died after being hit by a car while riding his bike.
His parents were also angered when it emerged that paramedics took 27 minutes to reach the teenager – about four times the regional average for responding to emergencies.
Ms Burnside added: “Police have been absolutely outstanding with their support, as have our neighbours.”
