Woman fundraises for paramedics who raced to help partner

The partner of a Kent Police officer who died after a car crash while on duty has said the drive to hospital after the incident was the longest of her life.

Hannah Kitney's boyfriend of five years, PC Bradley Corke, died in March following the crash which occurred while he was responding to an emergency call in Farningham, near Swanley.

She is planning to raise funds for Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) after they airlifted the officer, from Hastings, to a London hospital following the car crash.

Kitney and her mum drove to London after the incident, which she told the BBC was her "the longest drive of my entire life".

She said she received a "really worrying" message from Corke's smartwatch after the collision, informing his emergency contacts it had "detected impact".

"It was hard because he was always someone who was okay, and no matter what he'd always be smiling and he'd always be alright," Kitney said.

She eventually received a phone call from Corke's father telling her to come to the hospital.

According to Kitney, because KSS quickly got her partner to hospital quickly for treatment it "gave us time to adjust and time to spend time with him, and have that hope".

Corke lost his life two days after the crash.

"If it had just happened it might have been a lot harder to deal with," Kitney said.

"We had that time with him and all his friends and family came to visit him. If the air ambulance weren't there for him we may not have ever got that."

She will take on a sponsored skydive later in July to raise money for the air ambulance charity, alongside her friend Katie Langley.

Kitney said Langley approached her with the idea a week after Corke had died and she did not "even remember agreeing to it".

"When it hit me and we were making this GoFundMe page, and we're talking about it, I realised what we were doing and I just thought how funny Brad would find that," she said.

"I think the thought of him not believing that we'd be doing that, that's what's motivated me to want to do it so much."

More than £12,000 has been raised already, on top of the sums raised by Corke's brother and his friends.

According to Kitney, becoming a police officer was "exactly what he wanted to do and he was really good at it".

When he told her on their first date that he wanted to join the police she thought he was "just trying to show off" until he "literally went after it and he did it".

"With Brad it was because he wanted to help people, because he wanted to do right," she said. "It wasn't a thing for himself, it was for other people."

A police investigation into the crash is ongoing.

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