A man has been charged after a four-year-old boy was hit by a car, leaving him seriously injured.
Jacob Burnside was taken to hospital following the incident in Springfield Gardens, Inverness, at around 7.47pm on Tuesday.
The Scottish Ambulance Service said it was not able to respond to the incident "as quickly as we would have liked", taking 21 minutes to arrive at the scene.
The boy's injuries are serious but are not thought to be life-threatening, police said.
He is being treated at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness.
Police said a 33-year-old man has been charged with road traffic offences in connection with the incident.
He will appear at Inverness Sheriff Court in due course.
The Scottish Ambulance Service said it received a call to an an incident on Springfield Gardens, Inverness at 7.47pm on Tuesday July 18.
A spokesman said: "At the time of this call, our local crews were attending to patients with immediately life-threatening conditions which meant we were unable to respond as quickly as we would have liked.
"One of our clinical advisers attempted to contact the 999 caller to ensure there had been no change in the patient's condition.
"We dispatched the nearest available ambulance which arrived on scene at 2008 hours.
"A four-year-old male patient was transferred safely to Raigmore Hospital.
"We encourage all patients who are dissatisfied with the service they have received to contact our Patient Experience Team to enable us to explain the circumstances around the delay and see if any lessons can be learned."
The police investigation is still under way and anyone with information is asked to contact police on 101, quoting reference NN/17854/17, or call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 if you prefer to remain anonymous.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here