A teenage boy was forced to endure an agonising three hour wait for an ambulance after breaking his knee playing football.
Kieren Burgess, 15, badly shattered his kneecap following a horror tackle 15 minutes into a Sunday League match two weeks ago.
The distressed youngster was left stricken on the pitch in excruciating pain while he waited for paramedics to arrive after his worried mum dialled 999 at 2.15pm.
By the time the ambulance turned up and got Kieren to a hospital 20 miles away at 5.45pm – four hours had passed since he suffered his nasty injury.
X-rays taken at Northampton General Hospital showed that Kieran’s knee was completely shattered and he needed a metal screw fitted.
Yesterday, his angry mum Lisa, 38, from Rothwell, Northants., blasted the ambulance service’s response to her 999 call.
She said: “I know the ambulance has to deal with a lot of people, but for my child to be laying in a field in the cold for that amount of time makes me really upset and angry.
“It is disgusting. The thought of it makes me feel sick because he was in so much pain and we just had to stand there and see him like that.
“I am going to put in a complaint and speak to our local MP.
“If people have those sort of injuries they need to get to hospital as soon as possible.”
East Midlands Ambulance Service chief executive Phil Milligan yesterday apologised for the delay.
He said: “I appreciate the discomfort and pain he must have experienced.
“I am sorry for the anxiety and distress experienced by Kieren and his family.
“During this time we experienced high demand on our services and had several ambulance crews already on their way to hospital, while other crews were responding to other people in more severe conditions.”
