TRUE to her training, ambulance technician Amanda Williams thought only of her patient as she lay injured after a bad car crash.

Amanda, based at Medway Ambulance Station, refused to be released from the vehicle until fire and rescue officers had safely retrieved her passenger Mollie.

Mollie, however, was no ordinary passenger. She is a baby hedgehog which Amanda was transporting by car to her parents’ animal sanctuary in Chislehurst.

“She is too small to survive the winter, so I was taking her to the sanctuary so she could be fattened up before being released into the wild,” said Amanda.

“I was nearly there when I was involved in a horrendous crash which flipped my car over and sent it skidding on its side.

“Fortunately my car is a heavy four by four, otherwise both the hedgehog and I would have been killed. When I’m transporting an animal for my parents I always strap the box in with seat belts, which also helped save Mollie.

“When the firemen came to cut me out I insisted that they got Mollie our first, because otherwise they could have forgotten her.”

Amanda, who has a passion for animals, and looks after four rescue dogs plus a horse, is still off work as a result of the accident, which happened shortly before Christmas. But she considers herself lucky to be alive.

Mollie’s mum was first discovered by Joan Cook, of Churchill Avenue, Chatham. She had been living behind her television, and Mrs Cook only realised she was there when the smell became overpowering.

At first she was thought to be a male hedgehog until she gave birth to Mollie in her garden.

“Because Mollie was under two pounds in weight she would never have survived the winter,” said Eddie Williams, who runs the Willow Wild Animal Sanctuary at Chiselhurst.

“We have been giving her special food supplements which come from America and she is putting on weight nicely. In the spring we shall release her back into Mrs Cook’s garden.”