British Army officer guilty of killing Irish soldier during exercise
Manslaughter conviction after live ammunition fired at range
A BRITISH Army officer has been convicted over the killing of an Irish soldier who was fatally shot during a training exercise. bullet from a GPMG machine gun. Two other officers, Lt Col Richard Bell, 45, and 40-year-old Warrant Officer Stuart Pankhurst were convicted of negligently performing a duty.
A court martial heard the three defendants were accused of having “a total disregard for the safety” of their men when they organised a live ammunition training exercise ahead of deployment to Kenya.
One witness told the court that following the shooting Capt Price said to him: “I’ve messed up haven’t I?”
The court martial board, consisting of seven senior officers, retired last Friday before returning the guilty verdicts yesterday. The trio are expected to be sentenced on July 24. At the start of the court martial, Nigel Lickley QC, prosecuting, said soldiers on one part of range 10 were firing directly at those in another part of the range, who were about 1km away.
He told the court martial soldiers would have been visible.
Capt Price, now of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Irish, was accused of manslaughter through his failure to set up and supervise a safe exercise.
It was said that Capt Price, who was a lieutenant at the time of the incident, failed to attend a recce of the range when preparing a Range Action Safety Plan.
He was also alleged to have placed those targets too close together and of failing to “deconflict” the two exercises.
Col Bell, who was then a major and Capt Price’s company commander, was the senior planning officer for the exercise and was accused of failing to review or counter-sign the RASP produced by Capt Price and failing to supervise or support him.
WO Pankhurst, who was an acting sergeant supervising the exercise involving Rgr Maguire on area 10A, was accused of failing to “express any caution or concern” despite having attended the recce and having knowledge of the extent of the adjacent shooting on area 10B.