In what has to be one of the most horrifying stories you’ll hear all week, a woman claims she fell out of the back of a moving ambulance in Russia on the way to a local hospital but that parademics in the vehicle failed to notice for at least 16 miles. Galina Dmitriyeva, 56, says she’s been left “lame for life” after she rolled out and onto a busy road, leading to a criminal investigation that was eventually shut down. Thankfully, she was rescued by another ambulance and taken to the hospital.
- She had called emergency services after believing she had suffered a stroke. Thankfully, she hadn’t. However, she was being shuttled from a hospital in Lipetsk city to Zadonsk District Hospital so doctors could assess why she was feeling breathless and dizzy. That’s the journey she was on when this incident took place.
- This could easily have been avoided. This whole disaster would likely have never happened had the parademics not broken the rule that ways one member of staff must sit in the back of the ambulance with the patient. Instead, both sat in front, leaving the woman alone in the back. “I felt increasingly unwell,” Dmitriyeva told Komsomolskaya Pravda. “I said to the woman paramedic that I was unwell. She shouted at me: ‘What do you want now? Sit quiet.'” It was when she tried to call to the front for help that she fell out of the door, which hadn’t been properly locked.
- Dmitriyeva narrowly avoided being hit. She was allegedly unconscious when she rolled onto the road and was nearly hit by oncoming traffic upon falling from the ambulance. Given that most drivers won’t have expected a human being to be lying on the pavement, it’s a miracle she wasn’t even more seriously injured.
- Thankfully, other drivers came to her aid. It wasn’t long before several drivers stopped to help Dmitriyeva as she lay in the road. A traffic policeman even tried to resuscitate her. Thankfully, another ambulance crew arrived to rush her to the hospital, where she eventually came to.
- She broke her leg, jaw, and hip in the fall. She says the injuries she sustained mean she will be “lame for life” and claims she’s never received so much as an apology for what happened to her. She now uses crutches to get about and says she has trouble speaking. The hospital initially claimed she left the ambulance of her own accord but later admitted responsibility.
