A newborn baby died after a mother’s call for an ambulance went unanswered.
Amelia Pill welcomed a healthy baby girl, Wyllow-Raine, via C-section on September 27 at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England. Two days later Pill was discharged to go home with her newborn.
However, on September 30, Wyllow-Raine was crying and developed a fever. At 4:38 a.m., Pill called 999 for an ambulance after her daughter was “stone cold” and appeared to have stopped breathing, BBC reports.
The mother began to panic after it took seven minutes for the call to be connected to an operator.
“Why are they not answering the f—ing phone?” Pill shouted while waiting. “No-one is coming, no-one is coming.”
Pill and her family members spent over 30 minutes giving the infant CPR until the ambulance arrived at 5:09 a.m. Wyllow-Raine was taken to the hospital but was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.
On October 2, a pre-inquest review into the newborn’s death was held at Oxford Coroner’s Court.
Wyllow-Raine’s cause of death was determined to be “sudden unexpected death in infancy, unexplained.” Pathologist Dr Darren Fowler reportedly told the hearing the baby’s cause of death was “more likely than not” to have been natural.
Additionally, Karen Sillicorn-Aston, clinical governance lead for the South Central Ambulance Service, said Pill’s 999 call was disconnected by a BT operator, whose job is to listen to all calls before they’re answered. She ruled that the operator should have passed the call to another service.
According to South Central Ambulance Service, an ambulance was supposed to arrive within seven minutes in 90% of cases, BBC reports. South Central Ambulance Service did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
The full inquest is set to resume on December 2.
