A 15-year-old wide receiver playing in his first JV football game snapped his ankle during the fourth quarter at Southern Durham High School last Wednesday night, and when his family called for an ambulance, they were told none were available anywhere nearby. His parents, Marquita and Cody Singleton, ended up driving him to the hospital themselves after training staff placed two separate calls to Durham County EMS that went unanswered by any ambulance.
The injury happened with eight minutes left in the game, during a JV matchup against the Southern School of Energy and Sustainability Spartans, according to CBS 17. Marquita Singleton said parents rushed onto the field to check on their son after seeing him go down, and the family grew alarmed enough to call Durham County EMS themselves out of concern that his injured ankle had no pulse. Training staff tended to the ankle while they waited, then called EMS a second time after several minutes passed with no help in sight.
Told No Ambulances Were Coming
According to the family's account relayed to the station, Durham County EMS told the training staff that no one was coming because there were no ambulances in the area. With no other option, Cody Singleton said he ran a quarter mile up the street to retrieve the family's vehicle so they could get their son to the hospital themselves. The teen had suffered a snapped ankle, and his parents ultimately transported him rather than continue waiting for a unit that never arrived.
The Singletons are now questioning how long Durham County EMS takes to respond to scenes generally, a concern that fits into a pattern the agency's own numbers help explain. Durham County EMS posted an average eight-minute response time in fiscal year 2025 while also absorbing a 3% increase in call volume that year, per figures cited by CBS 17. The station reported that Durham County EMS has, in the past, called in neighboring agencies to keep calls from being left waiting, though it's unclear whether that backup option was used the night of the Singletons' call. CBS 17 asked Durham County EMS to address the specific incident and said the agency had not done so as of publication; the station says it plans to keep pressing for answers.
A Staffing Shortage Years in the Making
The gap the Singleton family ran into did not appear overnight. Durham County EMS was operating with 39 vacant positions out of 179 total budgeted slots as of December, according to EMS World, which reported that the vacancies had dragged the department's daytime operational fleet down from a target of 19 ambulances to an average of just 13 to 15 units on the road. The same report noted the department spent $1,709,670 on overtime across 34,627 hours in the prior year, still under its $1.9 million overtime allotment, with system leaders characterizing much of that overtime as scheduled shift work rather than unplanned call-ins.
County officials have moved to address the shortfall. The Durham County 2026-2027 fiscal year budget, established in June, allocated funding for new or reallocated full-time EMS employees, and a Durham County Government release from May detailed the County Manager's proposed budget recommending 10 new positions specifically to staff a new 24/7 ambulance unit, on top of 22 EMS positions the county had already added over the prior two years to keep pace with population growth. In July, the Board of County Commissioners authorized $2,494,682 to purchase six new ambulances through the SAVVIK purchasing cooperative, following a prior allocation for five ambulances approved in late 2025.
No State Rule Requires an Ambulance at the Game
Part of what left the Singleton family in this position is structural. North Carolina state policy, per the NCHSAA, does not legally mandate a dedicated standby ambulance or outside EMS presence at every regular-season high school football game. The NCHSAA handbook does require member schools to maintain a written, venue-specific Emergency Action Plan reviewed annually by a licensed athletic trainer and approved by the principal, but those plans establish roles for coaches and on-site medical staff while still depending on local 911 systems for actual transport. An EMS1 industry report from 2015 noted that no state anywhere in the country requires a dedicated standby ambulance at routine high school games, largely because of the cost to municipalities.
Durham isn't alone in wrestling with this tension between growing call volume and finite ambulance supply. Neighboring Wake County EMS rolled out a phone-based 911 triage system to prioritize life-threatening Level 1 calls over lower-acuity requests, routing less urgent callers to nurse navigators instead of dispatching an ambulance immediately, Hoodline reported earlier this year. Wake County commissioners separately approved 12 new full-time EMS positions, including seven paramedics and five EMTs, to keep up with regional growth, reflecting a broader Triangle-wide scramble for paramedics who face stiff competition from private hospital systems.
Longer-Term Fixes Still Years Away
Durham is also investing in physical infrastructure to close the gap. The city is progressing on a roughly $29 million co-located Fire Station 19 and EMS facility in Research Triangle Park, aimed at positioning emergency resources closer to fast-growing, high-call areas, though it isn't scheduled for completion until summer 2027. In the meantime, city fire crews carry much of the medical-response burden: over 65% of all Durham Fire Department calls are medical emergencies, and more than 350 city firefighters are certified as Basic or Advanced EMTs, with primary fire apparatus equipped with semi-automatic defibrillators and trauma supplies.
None of those investments were in place in time to help the Singleton family last Wednesday. For now, the episode leaves an open question the family and CBS 17 are still pressing Durham County EMS to answer: why no ambulance, and no backup from a neighboring agency, reached a teenager with a snapped ankle and a training staff calling twice for help.
