Nine hours and 52 minutes: did Dave Strachan’s ambulance wait cost him his life?

When he woke up with chest pains, his wife, Lucille, called 999, expecting help to arrive in minutes. But as he drifted in and out of consciousness, their wait continued ...

On the evening of 15 March 2022, Lucille and Dave Strachan had supper in their north Wales home, watched their favourite TV show, Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly, then went upstairs to bed. Apart from one bout of food poisoning in the 1970s, Dave had never been ill before. But at about 11.20pm he woke up and told Lucille he had chest pains and difficulty breathing.

Lucille called their daughter Hilary, a doctor, before dialling 999 and asking for an ambulance. Was Dave breathing, the call operator asked. Yes, but he has chest pains and he’s cold, said Lucille. The call operator asked her to monitor Dave, to tell them every time he took a breath, information which was then fed into a computer.