Dave Morehead

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Date of incident – 15/07/07

Time – 6.30am

Location – Send, Surrey

In July 2007, Dave Morehead was involved in a serious car crash and was air-lifted to hospital by the Surrey Air Ambulance, just 5 weeks after the service was operational.

Mr Morehead was driving to work at the Guildford CID when he had a head-on collision with another car. He was trapped in his car for an hour whilst fire crews cut him out of the wreckage. Mr Morehead suffered serious injuries, his arm broke when it was pushed into the door arch, his leg was also broken by the impact but the most critical injury was the one sustained by his elbow which was severely fractured.

The Surrey Air Ambulance took just 10 minutes to reach the scene and when it was safe to do so, Mr Morehead was treated by the helicopter’s Doctor. He was then airlifted to the most relevant hospital, The Royal Surrey Hospital, where he was to spend several weeks recuperating after initially being in theatre for 10 hours.

We spoke to Mr Morehead in December and were delighted to hear that he has returned to restricted duties at work. He is still suffering the aftermath from that day; he now walks with a stick, his right arm is very weak and his elbow is rebuilding itself slowly but he was in good spirits and talked about the high regard he now holds the Air Ambulance in. As he comments ‘it is a vital service that ensures badly injured people are taken to hospital as soon as possible and with less trauma than land ambulances would cause. The quicker they get to you the quicker they can put things right. I was more than impressed with the speed of getting to hospital.’