Parents donate equipment to paramedics after sons left 'fighting for life'
Sheree and Andy Kelly donated funds for training mannequins after their sons were involved in a horror car crash in Glenshee
The parents of two young boys who were injured in a horror car crash have donated funds to buy training mannequins for the Scottish Ambulance Service.
Sheree Birse and Andy Kelly, from Dundee, raised around £15,000 after their sons Calvin and Carson set off for a day sledging in Glenshee with their cousins, Reece and Lee Tucker, in January 2021.
Tragically, the car they travelled in was involved in a horrific accident - Reece died at the scene and Calvin and Carson were left fighting for their lives.
The boys were flown by helicopter to the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow.
Lifelike training mannequins
The parents feel indebted to the emergency services who helped save their son's lives and saw the fruits of their donation at the ceremony in Paisley yesterday.
The Scottish Ambulance Service gave a live demonstration of the new training mannequins their donation has helped fund at ScotSTAR.
The ScotSTAR Paediatric Retrieval Service is a dedicated paediatric intensive care transport service based at Glasgow Airport.
The retrieval team take the skills of the paediatric intensive care unit on the road, to the bedside of critically ill children throughout Scotland.
'We want to give back'
Sheree said: "Our sons were in an accident, and obviously ScotSTAR arrived to help our sons so we raised some charity money along with everyone in Dundee to help give back.
"We got new mannequins, safety blankets and things like that - but the mannequins are similar to the size our sons were, so it's amazing to know we're helping to train people to help kids.
"It's so good to have the boys here to see how far they've come.
"Every time we drive past the hospital we see where our sons landed in the helicopter and it's a reminder of how much they did for us."
Andy added: "We're hoping to do another wee fundraiser at some point because without them, things wouldn't have happened the way they did.
"We just want to show our appreciation to the people who went out there and helped our family.
"Obviously we don't ever want this to happen to anybody - but we're glad to know we're helping to provide that training for people in this situation in future."
'Overwhelming and grateful'
Mike Gillespie, EMRS consultant for ScotSTAR, said: "We want to thank the family who've raised so much money for us, which we've put towards our education and training.
"We train on a daily basis and they raised quite a lot of money for us, which is quite overwhelming for us - we're so grateful.
"The fact the mannequins are so lifelike is so important for our training because we are sent to some really serious things.
"The higher the quality of the training we get, we more prepared we are for these things that we are deployed to."