Roofer's leg 'looked like it had been bitten by a shark' after horrific accident in Northampton town centre

A roofer had to be air lifted to hospital after nearly losing a leg in a horrific accident with a disc cutter.

James Turner revealed his thigh "looked like I had been bitten by a shark" when the power tool went wild while he was working on top of a 12-storey block of flats in Northampton town centre.

But air ambulance critical care medics took charge of his treatment at the scene and he was flown to a major trauma centre in Coventry in just ten minutes where an operation repaired the severe damage.

James, 33, explained: “The cutter shot up, kicked back and cut through my left leg. The wound looked like I had been bitten by a shark.

“I was in shock and my initial reaction was to run away but as soon as I put weight on my injured leg it crumbled beneath me like jelly. I put my hand down to feel what I had done and there was a big gash at the back of my thigh.”

Workmates made a tourniquet out of a high-vis vest in a bid to stop the bleeding after the accident, in March this year, and carried James to a lift which took him down to ground level until medics arrived.

First on the scene was a land ambulance followed by a paramedic in a car. They applied a medical tourniquet, but it wasn’t until the critical care crew from Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance arrived that James started to believe that he was going to be OK.

He was taken by land ambulance to nearby school playing fields where the helicopter had landed and flown to University Hospital in Coventry — a 33-mile journey which can normally take up to an hour during morning rush hour.

James added: “People were coming out of the flats with dressing gown belts and other things to tie around my leg to try and stop the bleeding. By this time I was in a lot of pain.

“With the greatest of respect to the other people there, I immediately knew I was in safe hands when the air ambulance crew came. They were so on point, so professional. Their critical care training made such a difference.

“They knew exactly what they were doing. They gave me drugs which reduced the pain and relaxed me.

“Hospital staff were waiting for me on the helipad at Coventry and I was taken into the Emergency Department where the helicopter crew did a handover with doctors to explain what had happened to me and the treatment I had been given by them.”

James was lucky that despite cutting down to the bone and through the hamstring and tendons, the main nerve between his spine and leg was intact. If that had been cut he could have lost the use of his leg.

After three days in hospital, he was allowed home but had to wear a leg brace for eight weeks. He has now returned to light duties at work for a while but is in the process of setting up his own business in Kettering.

The Local Air Ambulance Service covers Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland using state-of-the-art AgustaWestland 109 helicopters which have a top speed of 185mph — the fastest civilian choppers available to answer 1,800 rescue calls a year.

Each rescue mission costs approximately £1,700 but the service gets no funding from government or the National Lottery and relies entirely on voluntary donations.

James added: “I was amazed when I found out that the local air ambulance doesn’t get any funding from the Government for its daily missions.

"I couldn’t understand it. It blows my mind that it is a charity. I organised a direct debit to support them straight away.”

To support the air ambulance and it lifesaving work, visit www.theairambulanceservice.org.uk or call 0300 3045 999.