‘Remarkable lack of urgency’: Paramedics took 3 hours to reach London Bridge attack victims

Paramedics didn’t reach wounded and killed victims of the London Bridge terror attack for three hours, an inquest into the incident in which eight people were killed has heard.

Although the three attackers were shot dead within 10 minutes of the June 17, 2017 attack taking place, paramedics did not enter the ‘warm zone’ for a long time, and police officers who were treating the wounded didn’t know that ambulances were just 100 yards away.

The family of James McMullan, who died in the attack, gasped as police officer Stephen Attwood said, “I believe he could have been saved. I believed he was seriously ill but in a critical condition,” the Times reports.

Two officers who were stabbed had to be taken to hospital in police cars because ambulances were three miles away at that stage. When the ambulance staff moved closer to the scene, they were only treating those who were brought to them.

Gail Collison, a member of the hazardous area response team arrived at the scene at 11:18pm and didn’t treat her first patient until 1:07am. Her first and second patients were already dead.

Gareth Patterson, QC, representing the families of six of the victims, said it showed a “remarkable lack of urgency.”

Two tactical response paramedics arrived five minutes after the attack but determined the situation was too dangerous to enter. They treated casualties across the bridge instead and returned back to the scene over an hour later.

Paramedic Keir Rutherford was worried about members of the public approaching his car so he locked it and drove further down the street, the inquest at the Old Bailey heard.

Two members of the London Ambulance Service (LAS) told the inquest that they still did not know where Boro Bistro was, which was where four of the eight people who died were killed. The LAS received two 999 calls at 10:15pm informing them of where the attack had taken place.

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