Protocols followed before ambulance hijacking in Cambridge
Posted May 29, 2017 03:44:35 PM.
Last Updated May 29, 2017 05:46:52 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A female paramedic didn’t break any rules when a man hijacked her ambulance from Cambridge Memorial Hospital very early Sunday morning, according to the chief of Waterloo Region’s emergency medical services.
The keys were in the ignition and the doors were unlocked, when the man entered the vehicle shortly after midnight and led multiple police forces on a high-speed chase ending in cottage country. But Stephen Van Valkenburg says there was a paramedic inside, filling out paperwork in the passenger seat.
She was waiting for her partner to return from the emergency department, because they had just dropped off a patient and the ambulance was about to go back on the road. That’s when the man got behind the wheel and the paramedic jumped out.
“[The driver] was just finishing up inside the emergency department… typical protocol of what would happen during a call,” he says.
Because the ambulance was occupied at the time of the theft, Van Valkenburg says there was no negligence on the part of the paramedics.
“Obviously the keys are not to be left in the ignition if it’s not attended. Now this particular case, the vehicle was attended — there was a paramedic in the front of the vehicle,” says Van Valkenburg. “This will be less of an issue when they complete the construction at the hospital, because the ambulances will be contained within a garage area.”
Nonetheless, the Ministry of Health has been notified and the Region of Waterloo Paramedic Services are undertaking a review of their policies.
“We’ve launched an investigation,” Van Valkenburg says, “but as the protocols are written, there was no breach of protocol in this particular instance.”
