Phone traces driver
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by Lee Kimber • A truck driver who suffered a stroke arid lay in his cab for 18 hours was saved after a policeman kept him talking for an hour on his cabphone as telephone engineers traced the call.
Paralysed and unable to see, Brian Harding, of Kingswinford, lost the ability to speak moments after he was found.
His employer, Binning ham-based Thornley Freight, alerted police when it was unable to get a response from Harding after he missed deliveries on Tuesday last week. West Midlands police called him on his mobile phone but found him barely able to speak.
They frantically tried to narrow down his location with a series of yes/no questions while Vodafone engineers homed in on his signal. Inspector Philip Wright located Harding with questions like "are you in a town" and "are you near the seaside", knowing that Harding could lapse into unconsciousness at any moment.
"At one point we did lose him," he says. "It was obviously a real effort for him to say yes or no." But the engineers traced Harding to Seaview car park in Southend town centre just as Wright's question-and-answer session came up with the same location.
"He made a sterling effort to keep speaking." says Wright. "He lost the ability to speak seconds after the ambulance canae. I don't know but I think he may have kept going because he knew this was his only chance—he must have feared for his life."
Harding is undergoing brain scans in Southend Hospital. His condition is described as stable.