Man rushed to hospital after ice tumble in Blantyre

Jan 7 2010 by Chris Clements, Hamilton Advertiser

A GOOD Samaritan has told the Advertiser how he feared the worst for a man who incurred a serious head wound in an icy Blantyre street.

Jim McColl (53), of Coatshill, explained how, along with neighbours and a passing taxi driver, he helped a man who was injured after slipping on ungritted pavement.

On Hogmanay, the retired TV technician was driving through icy Lime Grove to a pal’s house when he spotted a taxi parked at an angle.

He said: “I saw a man lying in the street near the taxi and the taxi driver seeing to him.

“Right away I knew there had been an accident but my initial thought was that the car might have been involved.

“The driver said he saw the man slip as he was stepping off the pavement.

“We saw that he was deeply unconscious and there was a pool of blood. Myself and the taxi driver put the chap into the recovery position and made sure he hadn’t swallowed his tongue, while a girl down the street phoned an ambulance.

“I tried to make him comfortable by putting a travel rug under his head, but the blood really was oozing from him.”

Jim explained that the victim was a large man in his late forties to mid fifties.

He added: “The pavement was like a sheet of glass and he smashed the right side of his head on the kerb. He was in a bad way.

“I don’t know if he was drunk or had been on medication, but I didn’t smell any alcohol at all.

“It really worried me, especially since he didn’t regain consciousness the whole time I was with him.”

Jim said that he called up various hospitals across the county after the accident to find out what happened to the injured man. He added: “I wasn’t getting much information as I didn’t know his name and wasn’t a family member.

“Eventually the ambulance service told me that he arrived at Hairmyres at around 3.14pm, but I don’t know what happened after that.

“I think that if those streets had been properly gritted, then this accident would never have happened.”

A spokesman for NHS Lanarkshire said that, over the last weekend, there was around average attendance for accident and emergency admissions at county hospitals for this time of year.

However, she added: “What we did see was a slight increase in certain types of injuries, in particular trauma injuries, such as broken wrists, caused by slips and trips.

“Our highest attendance this winter was on December 14, when we had almost double the A&E attendance than what you would expect.”

While a spokesman for South Lanarkshire Council said that he couldn’t comment on a specific accident, he did point to measures discussed by councillor Chris Thompson, chairman of the Enterprise Resources Committee. His statement is printed opposite.

l Do you know the man who was injured in Lime Grove? Contact Chris Clements the Advertiser on 01698 205013.

LIME GROVE: the icy conditions there resulted in an emergency situation after a pedestrial slipped and suffered a serious head injury.