After witnessing a motorcycle accident and collision with a pedestrian, a Labour councillor and emergency medical dispatcher, who has served 25 years with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust from Bradford managed to save a life whilst on holiday in Turkey in July.

Off-duty dispatcher Cllr Aneela Ahmed was on annual leave in Marmaris with her family, arriving at a sunny resort during the early hours of the morning on 6 July.

The family had planned to have hired a car during their stay, which turned out to be too small to accommodate the four adults and two children at the airport, so they returned the car and got a taxi to the place they would be residing till 18 July.

On the evening of 7 July, on a planned outing with her grandkids, along with her daughter, son-in-law and husband, Cllr Ahmed and her family were walking to a location they had been to before but lost their bearings slightly and turned the wrong way, walking around 15 minutes in the wrong direction and upon realising, they turned back.

Halfway to reaching their destination, they heard the loud sound of metal scraping against the road surface.

A moped on its side came full pelt towards them but was stopped by the ankle height barriers that separate the cycle lanes from the main carriageway in place on the pavements in Turkey.

Cllr Ahmed told Asian Standard how the events unfolded:

“The motorcyclist was coming full speed skidding towards us with his legs in the air, I ran over to see the rider and made sure he was conscious and breathing.

“I realised further up around forty or fifty yards away, people were gathered around someone laying on the ground, at that time I thought it must have been a passenger who was on the back of a bike, as it was coming at such a speed”.

She recalls making sure that it was safe and there were no traffic concerns and then went over to see what the commotion was as she saw “An elderly gentleman, who was English on the floor with the most horrific leg injury that I’ve ever seen in my life.

“His leg about 4 inches above his ankle had completely come away, his foot was detached from his leg and literally hanging on by a piece of skin”.

Horrified by the people who were surrounding him, recording the incident on their phones and not helping, she says “I quickly moved everybody out of the way and got down next to him and in my peripheral hearing I could hear a lady screaming and wailing and I didn’t register that she was with him, it was his wife”.

The elderly couple, Cllr Ahmed later came to know as Bill and Allison, whom she befriended are from Greater Manchester.

Cllr Ahmed’s daughter who is also first aid trained was dealing with the motorcyclist, till his friends arrived and then went to look after the wife of the gentlemen who had been involved in the incident, whom Cllr Ahmed says was “extremely distressed and inconsolable”.

Cllr Ahmed who also works for the ambulance service in Yorkshire said her training kicked in when she saw the amount of blood the man was losing from his foot and knew she had to act quickly to prevent further blood loss.

“I grabbed a Turkish gentleman who was passing by and ushered him to come over to help, sitting down on the opposite side of the injured man, I instructed him using hand gestures, to take off his belt and wrap it around the leg of the injured man, creating a tourniquet to apply pressure and stop the flow of blood that was spurting out”.

Despite the language barrier, Cllr Ahmed says “He just listened and did everything I asked him to do, when he was slacking off I just repeatedly told him to hold it tight to stop the blood and eventually we managed to stop the bleeding from his leg.

“We managed to get him across to the hospital by ambulance, I stayed with his wife during the incident, and later took her to the hospital after we collected vital insurance documents from their hotel.  That night they operated on him at a small hospital and then moved him to a bigger hospital. The surgeons managed to save his foot, otherwise, it would have been a possible amputation”.

She reflects on having intervened saying “When we got to the hospital, they said that if he would have carried on bleeding, he probably would have died of blood loss because he had lost quite a large volume of blood already”.

Bill, who is in his late 70s and resides in Manchester with his family was flown back to the UK on 1 August by air ambulance. He had sustained other injuries from the incident which included a fracture to his back, fractured ribs, as well as a clavicle fracture from the impact.

The daughter of the couple, Abbie, wrote to patient relations at Cllr Ahmed’s place of work, saying “Aneela was walking past at the time my father was hit and if it wasn’t for her being there, there is every chance he would have died,” she goes on to say “Aneela went above and beyond that night and I just thought you should know how amazing she is and that we cannot thank her enough”.

“The chap was doing everything right, he was crossing at a zebra crossing, the bike was going too fast when he hit him and the rules on the zebra crossing are the same as they apply in the UK, the pedestrians have right of way,” Cllr Ahmed explained.

The Turkish law enforcement known as Jandarma is taking further action against the motorcyclist, who not only injured himself but severely injured an innocent man, doing everything right as put by Cllr Ahmed.

Putting the misfortune of the incident down to fate, Cllr Ahmed says: “we went the wrong way, but something wanted us to be there at that moment and so we managed to do what we could do to help the gentleman the best I could without any equipment and just common sense.”

The experience has certainly shocked Cllr Ahmed, but it has made her further committed to urging everyone to undertake the correct training that could help save a life. She concludes: “Every minute that goes by is detrimental, we do a lot of teaching here in Yorkshire with communities, and I’m part of a team that goes out to schools to teach children CPR and teach alongside other volunteers and staff members.

“It’s so important for people to learn the basic first aid, unblock the airways and how to control bleeding and simple things like that. You could save a life”

Thanks to Cllr Ahmed’s heroic actions, quick thinking and first aid knowledge she not only saved a life but also saved a Manchester tourist from having his leg amputated.

Asian Standard salutes Cllr Ahmed’s bravery.