A CALLOUS thief raced off in a doctor's car minutes after she had leapt out of it to save the life of a pensioner hit by a bus.

She had jumped out of her Renault Clio after coming across the elderly man critically injured in the smash on Eccles Old Road in Salford on Wednesday.

But in her rush to give first aid to the man - in his 70s - she left the keys in the ignition and an opportunist thief drove off as the doctor was trying to the man's life.

The injured pedestrian was taken to hospital in a critical condition but today he was said to be stable.

Supt Ian Palmer, of Salford police, said: "We want to express on behalf of the community around where this occurred and also on behalf of the victim and the doctor our utter outrage. How low can somebody sink to have committed such a crime?

"Vehicle crime per se is bad enough. Anybody who has their car interfered with will think that is bad enough. It's despicable in itself. But this is just plumbing new depths.

"It was obvious an accident had taken place at the scene. It would have been obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse that the person who had left the car was tending to someone who was involved in a road traffic accident. But then to get in the car and steal it? Words really do fail me that someone can have such a lack of human decency to steal a car in these circumstances"

Resident Samantha Grundy, 28, said: "What kind of mentality do some people have? Why would you want to do such a thing? It's sick."

Following the incident, Eccles Old Road was closed between the junctions of Half Edge Road and Stott Lane, and closures were also in place on Park Road, Victoria Road and Wilton Road.

Police said the car is red with the registration number NY05 RZN.

The bus remained at the side of the road for several hours until it was towed away shortly before 8.30pm. It had a series of large cracks in its windscreen close to the front passenger door.

Witnesses to the accident spoke of hearing 'a loud bang'. One said that the elderly man was crossing the road when he was hit by the bus.

As revealed in the M.E.N, opportunist thieves have been responsible for a wave of thefts of sat nav units from ambulances as crews have been tending to patients.

In one such case earlier this year, a critically-ill 85-year-old woman had to be transferred to another ambulance after the one she was in was targeted.

In another attack, in the same week, a crew was cleaning their ambulance at the Royal Bolton Hospital when a man ripped out its sat-nav unit. The man hid the device down his trousers, but handed it back when asked. The attempted theft was reported to police.

Late last year, 2007 paramedics were attending to a patient inside Rochdale Infirmary when the sat-nav was stolen from their ambulance outside. And in Heywood at Christmas, paramedics were treating an elderly man with a suspected heart attack inside his house when someone stole their ambulance sat-nav.

Anyone with any information about this incident, or who thinks they might have seen this car since it was stolen, is asked to contact police on 0161 856 5417 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.