The pain felt by a woman who died after three days beside her boyfriend’s body following a car crash was ‘almost incomprehensible’, an inquest has found.
Lamara Bell, 25, could have survived if the police had acted on the 101 call around five hours after the ‘devastatingly powerful collision’ in July 2015, the judge said, blasting ‘organisational failure’ by Police Scotland.
But officers who answered the phone failed to record reports that a car had been seen in bushes under an embankment next to the M9 near Bannockburn, Stirlingshire.
Sergeant Brian Henry had recorded the call but did not record the information in the force’s computer system and there was no procedure to cross-check whether action had been taken.
However, the badly injured Ms Bell was left in the rubble next to the body of 28-year-old John Yuill.
Police only responded after a second call three days later when a local farmer saw the Renault Clio and found the mother pleading for help. He died in hospital four days later.
In a determination issued after a fatal accident investigation (FAI) into the incident, Sheriff James Williamson said there was no system of reconciling the information recorded by the officer in the notebook with the actions taken.
He said: ‘Police Scotland’s failure to properly risk-adjust call handling procedures and have a reconciliation system is an organizational failure.
‘Organizational failure that resulted in public safety being compromised and occurred on July 5, 2015.’
Lamara Bell, 25, survived when police made a 101 call about five hours after the ‘very violent collision’ in July 2015 – but she was left in the wreckage next to the body of 28-year-old John Yuill.
File photo from 2015 of police searching the scene at Junction 9 of the M9 near Stirling
Pictures show the car before the crash next to the M9 near Bannockburn
Police Scotland reiterated its apologies to the families of Mr Yuill and Ms Bell and said ‘significant improvements’ had been made to the call handling system since 2015, which now does not compare to the system in place at the time.
The inquiry heard that Mr. Yuill suffered unsurvivable injuries in the accident but Ms. Bell would probably have survived if she had received medical treatment on July 5, even with long-term neurological deficits.
But there was ‘no criticism’ of Mr Henry, now retired, who volunteered to do overtime at Bilston Glen, reaching what the sheriff described as a ‘confused, fractious work environment’.
However, he said: ‘Brian Henry was inadequately trained and unsupervised to operate a system that allowed human error to go undetected.
‘Undetected human error meant Lamara Bell was left in a vehicle on the side of a highway in Scotland suffering from injuries.
‘These injuries, together with the delay in saving and treating him, led to his death.’
Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs said: ‘The deaths of Lamara Bell and John Yuill are a tragedy and my first thoughts at this time are with my family and friends.
‘Police Scotland failed Lamara and John in 2015 and I repeat my previous personal apology to their loved ones. We did not keep them safe on time as it was our duty and I apologize.
“We have been involved in all inspections, investigations and inquiries since July 2015 to identify what went wrong and do everything we can to stop such an appalling incident from happening again.
‘Sheriff Williamson’s findings highlight the significant improvements that have been made to the call handling system. The way we respond to 999 and 101 calls today cannot be compared to the way we handled them in 2015.
“There is no consolation for the loved ones of Lamara and John, but I can assure you that lessons have been learned and that continuous service improvement is at the heart of everything we do.
‘We study determination in detail to learn anything that will be part of this continuous improvement.’
The wrecked car was found on July 8, 2015 after another member of the public called the police to report the sighting and emergency services went to investigate.
Sheriff Williamson found that the incident was not the result of one individual failure by Police Scotland, but ‘more than one and these failures occurred over a long period of time, during which the opportunity to address the problem was lost.
Gordon Yuill, father of John Yuill, heard how the failure of Police Scotland ‘materially contributed’ to the death of Lamara Bell, following a crash on the M9 in 2015
The FAI came after Ms Bell’s family was awarded more than £1 million in compensation from Police Scotland in a civil settlement in December 2021.
In September 2021, the force was fined £100,000 at the High Court in Edinburgh after admitting health and safety failings which ‘materially contributed’ to Ms Bell’s death.
Sheriff Williamson said Ms Bell’s suffering over three days, during which she was badly injured but conscious, was ‘almost beyond comprehension’.
He said that since the incident in 2015, the police Contact, Command and Control Division (C3 Division) has been transformed into an efficient, tightly controlled and sophisticated service center complex, all of which can communicate with each other in an integrated IT network. ‘ which can better serve and protect the community than in 2015.
He said: ‘It is not risk free. It still has a vulnerability to human failure, but the risk of human failure and undetected failure is now very low.’
