The vehicle’s windows were smashed in while crew travelled with their blue lights on to respond to a patient struggling with breathing difficulties. The damage to the ambulance is thought to cost hundreds of pounds to fix and has left the vehicle out of service. Reacting with anger at the vandalism, Emergency Services Operations Delivery Director, Nathan Hudson, said: “It is incredibly frustrating to once again find ourselves questioning why on earth somebody would want to do this to an ambulance.

“Not only that, but given it was using blue lights at the time, whoever did this could clearly see it was responding to an emergency, what if it had been on the way to one of their family members or rushing a loved one to hospital?”

Following the attack, emergency services were forced to dispatch a second ambulance to care for the patient.

No one was hurt during the incident.

Mr Hudson added: “We’re now faced with a vehicle being out of service, a repair bill and not forgetting the horrible nature of this incident for the staff involved. I am extremely thankful no-one was hurt.

“We will be pulling the CCTV from the vehicle and passing it to the police but we would ask for anyone who has any information about this despicable incident to contact West Midlands Police.”

The latest attack comes after a freedom of information request by the BBC last year found that there had been more than 200 acts of vandalism on ambulances and rapid response vehicles between 2015 and October 2018.

Fireworks, wheelie bins, knives and scooters have all been used to vandalise the emergency vehicles.

Anyone with information on the attack is asked to call 101 and quote 20be/75740d/19

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