A BOY who had a miraculous escape after being run over by a tractor is going back to school on Monday.

But his father, Buckden farmer Alex Bentley, has criticised the ambulance service, saying if he had waited for the ambulance to reach his remote farm his son would be dead.

He had addressed Buckden Parish Council on the ambulance service only weeks before seven-year-old Jerry Gregory escaped relatively unscathed after a two-ton tractor ran over his stomach at the Oughtershaw farm.

On the day of the accident Alex ended up driving Jerry to Airedale Hospital in his Mercedes after, he claims, he was told the nearest ambulance was 30 miles away.

Alex told the Herald: "I made a quick call to the ambulance service after Jerry's accident and the ambulance was quite a long way away so I just said 'forget it, I will take him myself'.

"I put him in my car and we got down to Airedale within 42 minutes.

"Within an hour of him getting there he had X-rays and a scan and was stable. What would have happened if I hadn't had a car. He could have been dead.

"After this I am going to make a noise to get some service started out here.

"There are times when there isn't an ambulance within 50 miles of Oughtershaw. They have got to put more money into it."

After recovering from an injury to his liver Jerry is looking forward to returning to Greatwood Primary School in Skipton on Monday.

His amazing close shave even astonished doctors, who assumed the lack of injuries was down to the fact that children's bodies and organs are pliable.

Alex added: "All we realise is how lucky we are with Jerry. He was millimetres away from being killed."

A spokesman for West Yorkshire Ambulance Service said: "If the vehicle at Grassington is out we roll out cover from Skipton, Keighley or Settle. Normally in a week our staff deal with almost 3,000 emergency calls.

"Despite this level of demand our crews reach over 64 per cent of patients within eight minutes and over 96 per cent within 14 minutes.

"These are some of the best performances in the country."

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