More powerful memories from Steve of life on the beat

A Blood Bath (warning some people may find this distressing)

One early Sunday morning in the early seventies I was driving a police panda car in the Withington area of Manchester.

I was just driving very slowly when I saw a woman frantically waving at me, she was covered in blood.

I stopped and she screamed at me that a young boy had been injured and she led me up a driveway leading to a garage.

I saw the boy lying on the ground with another lady holding a blood soaked towel into the boys neck, I immediately radioed for an ambulance and knelt beside the boy, asking how this had happened.

The garage was a working garage and it stored its wrecks on its roof, which of course was a magnet for kids.

The roof however was unlike any other, it had a glass wall about five foot high with panels of glass and about a foot wide, the glass panels were reinforced with wire and were bolted together to form the wall, it surrounded the whole of the roof with a gap which led to a ramp which had a padlocked gate.

The boy lay so still and the blood was spurting out, ‘we need more towels’ but there was nothing, there was nothing to hand so I took off my tunic and took off my shirt and stuck it over the already sodded towel in the boys throat, the blue shirt soon became red.

I looked up at the glass wall only to be shocked to see many of the glass panels were damaged leaving horrific pointed shards of glass obviously caused by the numerous vehicles left up there banging into them.

I kept talking to the lad who was fading in and out of consciousness I looked into the eyes of the two women next to ,e and there was blank hopelessness in them. It seemed likes ages before we heard the sound of the siren from the ambulance.

The paramedics looked worried to say the least and it took them no time to press clean dressings over the towel and shirt already in the boys throat and he was very quickly moved into the ambulance and taken to Withington hospital,

I returned to my car and told the radio operator I was going to go to the hospital and for them to try and contact the boys parents and that the paramedics didn’t think he was going to make it.

They had established that when the boy had fallen he had cut his juglar and carotid artery on one of the broken glass shard panels when he had slipped whilst tying to climb over the glass wall

En route to the hospital the ambulance had contacted them telling them what they had and luckily the only micro plastic surgeon was just about to leave and when he was told, and he of course scrubbed up and waited.

The boy went into surgery where he was for four hours.

The mother had arrived along with a priest, because it was almost certain his injuries were unsurvivable.

The boys mother naturally was in bits and inconsolable.

I had my arm around her and must have looked odd just wearing my tunic without a shirt, when the surgeon appeared, He had a smile on his face,

‘What on earth caused these injures’ he said

I told him about the garage and its glass walled roof.

He told us that he had never seen such catastrophic injuries but luckily the glass shard had cut his carotid artery but had only sliced the jugular allowing some blood to keep going to the brain.

‘Is he going to be ok’ his mother asked.

‘he is very weak and the next twenty four hours are critical, but I am hopeful’

The surgeon looked at me and said, ‘It seem the garage owner may have some questions Officer’

I nodded, ‘Don’t worry on that score Sir’

The lad made a full recovery, and I learnt that he was actually accident prone and that his body was covered in scars from previous accidents.