Golfers practicing their drives at Manteca Municipal Golf Course Monday morning were interrupted by firefighters and police officers who were clearing the driving range for an emergency helicopter to set down on the lawn.

The REACH Air Medical Services ambulance was called out of the Stockton Municipal Airport to transport a 9-year-old boy who had been hit by a car that was estimated to have been driving within the speed limit of 25 to 30 miles an hour on Cherry Lane just east of Union Road.

Manteca Police spokesman said the boy was outside the family apartment playing when he ran into the roadway between vehicles parked at the curb.

Manteca Ambulance paramedics and firefighters worked with the boy and stabilized him for the flight to the U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. The injured youth was taken to the ambulance on a gurney and driven to the golf course parking lot where the emergency personnel met two flight nurses who checked the boy out away from the idling helicopter.

Firefighters along with the flight nurses carried the boy on a back board to the side of the air ambulance and lifted him on board. He was the second youth within 10 days to be airlifted by helicopter enroute to U.C. Davis. The other was a five-year-old boy who had fallen out of a second-story window in Lathrop reportedly receiving back and chest injuries.

A firefighter with the Manteca department has put together a resource manual for future traumatic injuries where an air ambulance might have to be called to the scene. The manual is a compilation of various landing sites throughout the city where the air ambulance could land near a given crash or accident scene giving a quicker response time.