Dramatic rescue of horror smash Stockton student to feature on TV real life drama show

The dramatic rescue of a Stockton student from a horror road smash is to feature on the new BBC 1 series Countryside 999.

Teenager Elly Latif suffered multiple injuries when she collided with a lorry on a wet country lane after spending the day at Flamingoland theme park, North Yorkshire, with her best friend and boyfriend.

She was driving back to her Stockton home in driving rain when the accident happened.

“It was pouring with rain and although I was not driving very fast I must have taken this bend too quickly,” said Elly.

“When I braked the wheels just locked and we slid across the road straight into the path of a lorry.”

Tuesday’s Countryside 999 follows the long rescue operation to get the badly injured Elly out of the car.

Boyfriend Daniel Thomas broke a toe and friend Billie Taylor cracked a vertebrae and were taken to hospital by road ambulance.

But Elly was airlifted by the Yorkshire Air Ambulance to York District Hospital with multiple injuries including a broken femur, a shattered and dislocated elbow, broken ribs, bruised lungs and facial injuries.

“I thought the air ambulance was just used to rescue people in remote areas or from mountains,” added Elly, who is studying biomedical science at the University of Lancaster.

“They were just great. If I had had to go by road it would have been much longer. Also with the amount of pain I was in the bumpy roads would have been just awful.”

Elly, now 20, spent two weeks in hospital and was wheelchair bound for a further four months, missing a whole term of her first year at university. It has been a long recovery but she feels very lucky: “It’s been hard. I had to do a lot of work from home and took my end of year exams in August. But it could have been a lot worse and I’m really grateful to all the emergency services for everything they did for me.”

Yorkshire Air Ambulance is an independent charity providing a rapid response emergency service to five million people across Yorkshire. It needs to raise £9,990 each day to keep its two helicopters flying.

Elly’s rescue will feature in Countryside 999 on BBC 1 Tuesday at 11am. The series follows emergency services in rural areas negotiating huge distances and difficult terrain.