Soldier Benjamin Johnson has been jailed for nine months for shooting painter and decorator Mark Piercy in the eye with an airgun.

It had been an ordinary day for Mark Piercy.

He'd been out with his friend, Bill Robinson and, as it neared 10 o'clock on that Saturday night in September, he was preparing to pick his mum up to take her to work at the Cheshire Home in Alne.

He and Bill were driving down Huby Main Street.

It was dark - so when Mark saw a car going slowly past without any lights on, he was surprised.

He leaned out of his driver's window, and called across: "Hey, mate, do you know you haven't got any lights on?"

The next thing the 27-year-old painter and decorator knew he was looking down the barrel of a gun.

"I never even had the chance to say a word," he said. "He just shot me."

The air pistol pellet struck Mark in the right eye, directly in the pupil.

He said there was a surge of blinding pain, then he was aware of his attacker's car tearing off down the road.

Miraculously, at first he retained some of his vision. He gave chase - only for his sight to suddenly cloud over. Mark said he lost control of the car, which rolled over once and ended up in a hedge beside the road.

The next thing he knew, he was being rushed to hospital by his dad, David, in the family car.

It was the beginning of an agonising night. A blood clot had developed in his eye, and Mark says for a while it was touch and go whether he would lose it. Speaking from the family home in Huby Mark's mum Pat said: "He was screaming: 'I've lost my sight! I've lost my sight, mum!' I said 'just wait for the doctor.' A nurse was trying to put drops in his eye, but it was agonising for him.

"Then a doctor came to take X-rays and we went to a consulting room. They said they hoped they wouldn't have to operate on his eye, but they would have to wait until the clot went down before they were sure."

Mark spent three days in hospital, and was off work for two weeks. He still gets flashbacks, but miraculously his sight has fully recovered.

He said: "I was very, very lucky. The police said if the pellet had hit me in the side of the head, the temple, I might not have been here today."

Benjamin Johnson, the 19-year-old private in the Royal Army Medical Corps who admitted assault causing actual bodily harm for shooting Mark, is now beginning a nine-month jail sentence.

Teesside Crown Court heard on Monday how Johnson, of Myton-on-Swale, near Boroughbridge, was "extremely sorry" for what he had done.

The incident happened after he had been at a party in Huby. But there had been no malice or grudge and he had not meant to hurt Mark, the court was told.

But Mark's girlfriend, Suzanne Cook, said today Johnson deserved everything that was coming to him.

She said: "Mark could have lost his eye. We're getting married this year and what kind of a start would that have been? Johnson got what he deserved."

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