A COUNCILLOR has hit out at the emergency services after her son was knocked unconscious and left for more than an hour without help.

Cameron Watters, son of Westhoughton South councillor Anna-Marie Watters, was assaulted in Bolton town centre in the early hours of Saturday.

The 18-year-old was punched in Bradshawgate and hit his head on a metal shutter as he fell at around 5am.

His mother has now criticised the emergency response to the incident, which left him with a perforated eardrum, after no ambulance arrived to take him to hospital.

Cllr Watters said: “It is impossible to explain how it felt being told at 5am that your son is unconscious lying on the floor in Bolton town centre.

“No ambulance turned up and when I got there a guy was saying to Cameron, ‘Stay with me, stay with me’.

“The police had left him there. They had taken away the guy who had hit him but didn’t check on Cameron.

“He ended up having a CT scan because he had bleeding in his ear.

“He can’t hear anything in his right ear at the moment, but they are going to have to wait until the perforation heals over to find out the extent of the damage.”

After being called by Cameron’s friends, Cllr Watters rushed towards Royal Bolton Hospital — but then went to the town centre when she was told no ambulance had arrived.

It was around 6.30am when she gave up on the ambulance and decided to take him to hospital herself, still not knowing the extent of her son’s injuries as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

She added: “His friends rang for an ambulance straight away, that was at 5.10am.

“Then they rang me and I started driving to the hospital. I was near Plodder Lane when they called back to say that the ambulance was not even there yet, so I went to the town centre instead.

“When I arrived there was still no ambulance and Cameron was still on the floor. He was drifting in an out. I am aware that he had been drinking, but he wasn’t completely wasted.

“I phoned the ambulance service and all they could say was that they were busy and they didn’t know when they would arrive.

“At 6.30am he went completely out and I didn’t know if he was breathing. I had had enough, we couldn’t hang on any longer and someone carried him to my car so I could drive him to the hospital.

“I didn’t want to move him because I didn’t know if he had broken anything, but he needed to get to the hospital.

“I believe there were six police vans there when he was punched, but not one checked to see that he was okay.

“I know that there are cuts, but surely the police have to do more than that. I couldn’t believe what I saw on Saturday morning."

The assault happened near to Allen’s Fried Chicken, after the group of friends saw a man pulling a girl by her hair and tried to intervene.

The North West Ambulance Service stated that they were first called about the incident at 5.38am, but Cllr Watters says they were phoned between 5am and 5.10am.

An NWAS spokesman said: “We received a call at 5.38am for an 18-year-old male who had been assaulted. On the initial call, the patient was reported as conscious and breathing and due to the other incidents we were dealing with at the time it was not possible to allocate an ambulance immediately.

“At 6.10am it was reported that the patient was drifting in and out of consciousness, following which we re-prioritised the call. We received a further call 12 minutes later to confirm that the parent of the patient was on the scene and they would take the patient to hospital. The ambulance was subsequently cancelled.

“We appreciate that waiting for an ambulance can be a stressful time, but due to the number of higher priority incidents we were unable to respond as quickly as we would have liked. We are currently receiving an extremely high number of 999 calls and that day, we received 4,486 calls.

“We do hope that the patient recovered well and if the patient or his family wish to make contact with our patient experience team, we would be more than happy to discuss this matter in more detail.”

Cllr Watters also thanked two men who stayed with Cameron while he was injured and kept crowds away from him.

Greater Manchester Police have been contacted for a comment.