Dartmoor soldier Cameron Laing 'crushed by trailer'

Pte Cameron Laing suffered head and chest injuries

A young soldier died after he became crushed between a military lorry and a four-tonne trailer on Dartmoor, an inquest has heard.

Pte Cameron Laing, 20, from Nottingham, and colleagues from the Royal Logistics Corp were manhandling the trailer on to a tow bar when it moved suddenly.

He suffered head and chest injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The exercise was at Bracken Tor near the Okehampton Army Camp on 29 April last year.

An inquest jury at County Hall in Exeter was told a four-vehicle convoy was delivering storage containers to the camp when they took a wrong turn and ended up on a gravel track at Bracken Tor.

'I blame myself'

The soldiers decided to unhitch the trailer from the truck so they could turn the convoy around and head back in the right direction to the base.

Home Office pathologist Dr Deborah Cook, who carried out the post-mortem, told the inquest: "Laing was struck and then pinned when a four-tonne trailer moved forwards unexpectedly and rapidly towards a wagon the Army team were trying to hitch it back to."

She said he suffered severe multiple injuries to his head, neck and chest which were "rapidly fatal" and said Laing had been "bent forward when he was struck".

Soldier Semi Rokotovitovi had statements read to the jury and said: "I blame myself for not seeing Cameron."

Suffered heart attack

He said they only had to hitch the trailer "three or four inches" on to the truck's tow pin but said the trailer's brakes had frozen up because they had run out of air.

He said in 10 years' service he had never encountered a problem or any danger in hitching a trailer to a lorry.

The soldier, who was not present at the hearing, said the trailer could not reversed by the lorry because it could jack-knife.

Dr Cook said Pte Laing also suffered a heart attack and was declared dead at the scene after ambulance staff spent 47 minutes trying to save his life.

The inquest is expected to last several days.