Chaos claim as girl died after ambulance sent to wrong address

A WOMAN has described the “chaos” surrounding her daughter’s death after an ambulance was sent to the wrong address as the schoolgirl suffered an asthma attack.

Elouise Keeling, 14, collapsed with breathing problems during an Air Cadets sports day at RAF Brampton near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, on June 25 last year.

An ambulance was called at 7.44pm but was sent to RAF Wyton, 10 miles away, by mistake and did not arrive until 8.03pm.

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Elouise, who had suffered from asthma since she was 18 months old, died at the scene as her mother looked on helplessly.

Karen Keeling told an inquest yesterday that she rushed to be by her “popular and bubbly” daughter’s side after she fell ill.

She added: “She rang me and said ‘Mum, my asthma is really bad, you need to come now’.

“She sounded really panicked. When I got to her she was lying on her back. Her eyes were open but she was unconscious. I knelt by her side and talked to her and kept telling her I was there.”

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As Mrs Keeling tended to her daughter, she overheard a phone conversation with the ambulance service.

“I heard him saying ‘You shouldn’t be there, you’ve gone to the wrong RAF base’,” she added. “When they arrived it was quite chaotic.”

Crews are supposed to respond to the highest priority cases within eight minutes but that journey took 19 minutes.

The East of England Ambulance Service has been widely criticised over delays in recent months.

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In December the family of Peter Nelson, 26, spoke out when he died following a two-hour ambulance wait after he collapsed at his home in Blakeney, Norfolk.

The incident came four months after a coroner described the trust’s crews as “chaotic” after hearing that three-month-old Bella Hellings died when paramedics took more than three times longer than national targets dictate to reach her home in Thetford, Norfolk.

The inquest heard that one vehicle got lost because “there were too many blue doors” on her street while another stopped for petrol while answering the 999 call in March.

In October last year, another inquest heard that Evelyn Heath, 93, from Attleborough, Norfolk, died from an irregular heartbeat in the back of an ambulance after the vehicle took more than four hours to reach her care home.

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Wing Commander Anthony Kelly, who is in charge of Air Cadets in Huntingdon, told the inquest at Huntingdon there had been incidents in 2006 and 2012 when ambulances had been unable to find the base because of an issue over the postcode.

“My understanding is that the matters were reported to the ambulance service,” he added.

Since Elouise’s deaths, both sites have been allocated individual postcodes.

The inquest continues today.