By Charlie Gall
The Daily Record
DUFFTOWN, Scotland —The boyfriend of a woman who died as a 999 medic took a tea break spoke of his heartbreak last night.
Grief-stricken Bobby Taylor, 29, struggled in vain to save Mandy Mathieson as an ambulanceman 800 yards away refused to go to the emergency call-out.
Instead, other 999 crews had to come from 15 miles away to their home in Tomintoul, Moray.
Bobby said: “I feel like we’ve been robbed of all our little plans.
“We were looking forward to making our house nicer and going on trips and just being together.
Grabbed “I know I was lucky with the time we had together, but I just thought we had so much more.
“Everything was normal and then you’re life just stops - just like that - for nothing.”
Bobby also told how he tried desperately to resuscitate Mandy, 33, as she lay dying after a heart attack.
Bobby said: “As soon as I saw her, I grabbed the phone and dialled 999.
“I don’t think she had breath or a pulse. The operator was telling me how to resuscitate her.”
Ambulance technician Owen McLauchlan, 23, refused the emergency call-out as he did weekend relief duty in Tomintoul.
Instead, an ambulance was called from Grantownon-Spey and a Sea King helicopter was scrambled.
Bobby accepts that even if McLauchlan had agreed to give up his tea break, Mandy would probably still have died.
He said: “I know he couldn’t have done anything but that’s not really the point. He didn’t know that.
“I could feel that she was warm but the other ambulance driver said he was sure she’d passed away a while ago before that.”
Bobby called for a “system change” to ensure that 999 calls cannot be ignored.
He added: “It’s bad that it takes something like this to highlight a failure with the system.
“It’s OK in the cities where there’s other relief to cover for ambulance drivers’ break times but not here in a place like Tomintoul.”
Mandy’s brother, Charlie Mathieson, 40, who has been a firefighter for 20 years, said the family had been “let down”.
He added: “To me, as an emergency service, yes, you are entitled to breaks.
“However, if a call comes in, you get your break at another point. That’s the nature of the job.”
Scottish Government minister Richard Lochhead will hold urgent talks with ambulance chiefs.
He is demanding an “urgent and full investigation” into why McLauchlan could refuse to respond to a 999 call.
McLauchlan, from Linlithgow, West Lothian, has been suspended from duty.
Copyright 2010 Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail Ltd.