Army sergeant died after being shot by soldier with ‘poor eyesight’

Soldier who fired the bullet was not wearing prescription lenses, inquiry finds

Sergeant Gavin Hillier, 35, from the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, was fatally injured during a training exercise at the Castlemartin range in Pembrokeshire ( Ministry of Defence/Crown Copyright/PA)

An army sergeant was killed when he was mistakenly shot at by a soldier with ‘poor eyesight’ who thought he was a target, an inquiry has found.

Sgt Gavin Hillier, 35, was fatally wounded during a live firing exercise at Castlemartin base in Pembrokeshire on 4 March 2021.

He was from the 1st Battalion the Welsh Guards and had served in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an inquiry report that also refers to him as a safety supervisor.

According to the report, the soldier who shot Sgt Hillier, referred to as Guardsman 1, was not wearing prescription lenses at the time and he did not have service-issued spectacles.

In the opinion of an ophthalmologist, this may have resulted in Guardsman 1 having “blurred vision, caused by the low light conditions ... would have caused significant disorientation, further exacerbated by the featureless landscape”.

The inquiry explained that due to the Guardsman’s blurred vision, the intended target, which was 290m (88m) away, would have appeared in the “same detail as someone with normal vision would have seen it at 1,740m [530m]”.

It added that due to entries in Guardsman 1’s medical records, the panel was “content that Gdsm 1 was aware that they needed corrective lenses to meet the entry standards of the Foot Guards”.

An army sergeant was killed after he was mistakenly shot at by a soldier with ‘poor eyesight’ (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

“The panel, therefore, deduced it was highly likely that Gdsm 1 understood the requirement to wear corrective lenses.”

The report made several recommendations to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

It states that officials “should establish an assurance mechanism to ensure that relevant individuals are wearing corrective lenses prior to live firing”.

It also suggests that the Director of Land Warfare “should educate training designers and providers on the available resources, particularly the BCS Handbooks, in order to ensure compliance with the Defence Systems Approach to Training”.