AN ELDERLY woman was rushed to hospital after tripping over a pothole in Bournemouth.

Ann Nightingale, 77, was visiting her friend Kevin Dunn in Bournemouth and was staying at the Connaught Hotel Best Western in East Cliff.

While Kevin was dropping them back to the hotel, Ann tripped over a pothole and ‘wacked’ her head on the ground.

Ann said: “I caught my heel on the back of the pothole, and it just tripped me off my feet.

“My body slammed into the ground, and my head bounced like a ball off the pavement.

“I thought I was going to die there and then.

“The pain was excruciating, and the impact was as if somebody slammed my skull into a brick wall.”

Ann, from Devon, said that the pothole was so big that she didn’t notice that she was standing inside it, and because it was dark, she couldn’t see that it was there.

Kevin said: “We had the biggest shock of our lives and are still quite shaken up about it.

“She really cracked her head.”

The ambulance service was called as Ann was not responding. She was rushed to hospital at around 9.25pm.

Kevin said: “One of the reasons Ann injured herself so severely was because of the jagged edge of the pothole, which scraped across her head.

“The pavement on the road is awful and a major defect of the council’s responsibility.”

Ann was taken to The Royal Bournemouth Hospital and was treated for her injuries, which thankfully will heal. However, there are concerns about a lump on her head.

Kevin picked her up from the hospital at 6am the following day, and Ann was told to rest, which meant she was forced to pay for another night at the hotel.

Kevin said: “The council needs to spend money on fixing the roads.

“It is one thing to have your car damaged, but my dear friend could have died because of a pothole.”

A BCP Spokesperson said:

“We’re sorry to hear of Ms Nightingale’s situation. Our Highway Inspection team have been made aware of the location of this incident and will attend at the earliest opportunity.

“Our teams carry out regular inspections of the network and complete an average of 8000 repairs to the network per year.

“We urge people to report areas of concern online via our Report It function Report a problem on a road or pavement | BCP (bcpcouncil.gov.uk)”.