A man who called 999 and said he thought he was having a heart attack died after paramedics took five hours to reach him, an inquest has heard.
Martin Coleman, 54, pulled over into a Lidl supermarket car park in Taverham, Norfolk, to call for an ambulance after he began experiencing chest pains and heart palpitations whilst driving home.
He was told by emergency services phone operators to get himself in a comfortable position as he waited for an ambulance to arrive, and so climbed into the backseat of his van to lie down - where he was found by paramedics a whole five hours later.
The car park in which he died was just a 15-minute drive away from Norfolk's largest hospital, highlighting the shocking scale of the NHS crisis and record delays in ambulance services.
In an inquest into his death heard this week, his daughter Roxanne told Norfolk Coroner Yvonne Blake: "My dad was a strong, proud man who would only call for an ambulance if he really needed it.
"I loved him more than life itself. I greatly admired his desire to help anybody.
"He was so much more than a father and a grandfather.
"He is not going to be a statistic, he is a human being who is missed and loved more than anything."
Chris Hewitson, patient safety manager at the East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST), told the court that at the time of Mr Coleman's call the service did not have a single ambulance free to attend.
He also said there was also no community first responders available at the time.
Mr Coleman's daughter questioned why her father's call was not escalated when he did not answer the attempted 'callback'.
She asked whether callers could be asked to provide an alternative contact number - such as a next of kin - when making an emergency call on their own.
Mr Hewitson said this was not something that was currently done but could be considered.
Meanwhile, David Allen, head of operations at EEAST, highlighted the pressures the service continues to face - despite efforts to make improvements.
He said: "Sometimes we can have up to 30 ambulances waiting outside the Norfolk and Norwich hospital at any one time.
"There are over 400 patients across the three Norfolk hospitals who are medically fit to leave but cannot be discharged."
He said the ambulance trust was making efforts to treat more people in the community and had been able to reduce the number needing hospital admission by 22 per cent.
Yvonne Blake, area coroner for Norfolk, concluded that Mr Coleman had died of a heart attack - but that she could not give a precise time of his death.
