The girlfriend of Louth’s Dualtagh Donnelly who passed away while waiting for an ambulance, has spoken out about the tragic night.
Lindzie Cooney, who has two children with Dualtagh and is pregnant with their third, was with him the night he bled to death, after waiting almost forty minutes for an ambulance.
According to RTE, Lindzie claims she called 999 after her partner severed an artery in his arm on a glass door in the kitchen, and passed away before the emergency services arrived.
She told RTE Radio One‘s Sean O’ Rourke: “I took him downstairs and out to the street because I was just trying to get someone to help me.
“It was just awful because it just wouldn’t stop bleeding.
“I knew it was so bad.”
She explained how the pair’s next door neighbours attempted to stifle the bleeding but that the injury was severe.
She added: “The man next door got towels and wrapped them around his arm and tied it really tight like it could have been around two towels.
“He tightened it to prevent the blood coming out so quick but it wouldn’t stop. It just kept coming and coming and coming.”
Describing how much blood Dualtagh lost, she said: “It was all over my stairs, out the front, it was really, really frightening, my hall, everywhere.
Dualtagh’s mother Oonagh added that she believes her son “would be alive today if there was an ambulance with him within 15 minutes”.
She said:
“This will happen again to some other family so if they could do something (like) have an emergency ambulance sitting at the Louth County Hospital so there is a quicker response.
“I have that much anger in me, I feel my son died because of politicians’ policies. My son would be alive today if an ambulance service had came within those precious 10-15 minutes.
“Always, always there should be an ambulance in Dundalk.”
The HSE said in a statement that they received the call at 3:06am and “an emergency ambulance were dispatched to the incident and arrived at the scene at 03:29 and 03:45hrs.”
They added: “The HSE welcomes feedback from service users in relation to its services. If the family have concerns regarding the response of the National Ambulance Service to this call, the National Ambulance Service would ask the family to make direct contact with them so that their concerns can be addressed.”
