woman freezes to death after falling from bike

[thirdcrank]

It's not a big deal but the first link I posted touched on the fact that a verdict had been reached.

Anyway, a horrible, lingering death.

[Jdsk]

You're right. My mistake.

Sorry

Jonathan

[mikeonabike]

If you find someone injured and needing assistance, don't you call an ambulance rather than the police?

[MikeF]

If you find someone injured and needing assistance, don't you call an ambulance rather than the police?

Indeed, the report is not clear "and was found by a dog walker who raised the alarm at 4.45pm" In what condition was she found - lying on the ground or what? Anyway if the woman was clearly injured then that person ought to have stayed until an ambulance arrived, but then we don't know circumstances, as to why the dog walker felt it was OK to leave her.

[peetee]

Perhaps they didn’t have a phone with them. After a few minutes of waiting for someone else to pass they felt the only course of action was to leave and get help.

[thirdcrank]

It's necessary to read all three links to get the whole story.

AIUI, the person who found the deceased when she was still alive had no mobile with him and decided it would be best to leave her while he rang the police. At some stage he searched the area looking for police.

[peetee]

It's necessary to read all three links to get the whole story .

Indeed. A reflection on the style of online news reporting. So often these stories are an incomplete, jumbled assembly of occurrences that only tell part of the story. Information is repeated two or three times and the article is chopped and inserted around irrelevant, distracting and at times insensitive advertising.

[The utility cyclist]

Humberside police are culpable in her death, the cemetery isn't that big, there's not a lot of ground to cover the whole area and there's few paths, the police haven't said sorry because they don't believe they've done anything wrong, just usual waffle regards making changes yada yada.

The lies regards their officers doing the "very best" they could is just outlandish and perverse. No-one did their very best, starting with the non prioritising/failure to respond in time, failure to do a proper search, failure to provide trained officers and equipment.

I was at the stadium not half a mile away for an international RL game with my folks and exited about 4:30pm in the opposite direction (to the cemetery) though we've often gone past that way to the ground. There would have only being a handful of police at the match as it's not soccer, I can't see how there were not available units to attend in the proper timescale, there was nothing else going on at the time that required excess police and the few police at the ground would have been a 10 minute walk away if they had taken a very slow walk.

[Tangled Metal]

If you find someone injured and needing assistance, don't you call an ambulance rather than the police?

Was it clear the person was injured or just drunk passed out or near passed out? If the latter you're more likely to call the police. A few hours in the "drunk tank" and all that! Or as a former colleague used to think the police were a taxi home after a night out!

[eileithyia]

i said early on in the thread, why would you ring the police and not an ambulance, and use 999..... (it's not clear if 999 was used).
It was stated that the 'finder' attempted to help the lady stand but she could not because of an injured ankle.
Injured or not someone who is collapsed, whether you suspect they are drunk or not, needs some medical attention. How would a non-qualified person (or even qualified one for that matter) know if there is another underlying cause for the collapse.... diabetes, epilepsy etc.....
And having left the scene to find help/ring for help why would you not return with some blankets / duvet or similar to keep the person warm.

[thirdcrank]

If a member of the public telephones the "wrong" emergency service, then the initial call handler can and should redirect it.

An obvious thing is to ask the caller to remain at / return to the scene, so that finding the casualty is simplified. There's sometimes a limit to how long somebody will wait. The main problem here is that the police were dealing with more incidents than there were personnel to cope. When that happens, as it increasingly does, then delays inevitably occur and people dashing from incident to incident may be less thorough in dealing with them when they get there.

AIUI, the emergency ambulance service is often under similar conditions.

[Carlton green]

I see your points eileithyia but the person passing by did act and could well have had many quite logical reasons not to take further action. Did the Coroner suggest some fault on the finder’s part? From what I read of the report in the Hull Newspaper the clearly inadequate Police response was the issue. I do not know the Police’s ability to respond and think that the PCSOs attending could and should have done a lot more and (without being overly judgemental) wonder why they didn’t. For the finder I wonder whether there are any reasons why someone making a 999 type call shouldn’t expect relevant emergency services to be deployed in a timely manner?

Yep, the finder going back with suitable things would have been ideal but we weren’t there to understand all the issues. Personally I wouldn’t want to wander around a cemetery at that time of day, in some places you run the risk of being attacked and mugged - local people know local risks. We also do not know what other commitments the finder had to attend to. For my part I would have (in error in this case) assumed that the Police now had the matter in hand and that I’d done my bit.

[NUKe]

the link that thirdcrank is a good description better than the mail , where the article was at best confusing

However from the link taking about the PCSO's the final
" "They were not trained in search techniques and did not have adequate power in their torchlights [they were not bright enough]."
Were they referring to the Police or the Torches.

[thirdcrank]

Whenever I read anything like this, I think about my own experiences. It's mentioned in one of the links that it was still daylight when the first report was received. Now, anybody with an iota of experience of searching for people reported missing knows that full use must be made of any remaining daylight. But this isn't an MFH report: there should be no question of searching for somebody reported as having been found. Nor were they found in remote moorland: no need for the finder to spell out SOS in the snow for the benefit of the helicopter. This was in Kingston-upon-Hull - according to wiki a city of 250,000 people. The simple point is that there were insufficient personnel available to cope with demand. Rationing by queuing has led to this death.

[The utility cyclist]

i said early on in the thread, why would you ring the police and not an ambulance, and use 999..... (it's not clear if 999 was used).
It was stated that the 'finder' attempted to help the lady stand but she could not because of an injured ankle.
Injured or not someone who is collapsed, whether you suspect they are drunk or not, needs some medical attention. How would a non-qualified person (or even qualified one for that matter) know if there is another underlying cause for the collapse.... diabetes, epilepsy etc.....
And having left the scene to find help/ring for help why would you not return with some blankets / duvet or similar to keep the person warm.

The person reporting to the police was quite elderly if I recall correctly, maybe the distance back was too much for them, maye they thought having called the police they would get to the scene before they possibly could.