An Iver teenager who was blinded in one eye during an Airsoft game in Marlow has launched a compensation claim for more than £200,000 at London’s High Court.

Adam Smith, now 15, from Pinewood Green, lost the sight in his left eye after another boy fired a BB gun into his face from just a few inches away, without realising there was a pellet in it.

Surgeons at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford battled to save his sight with emergency surgery, but could not.

Now through his father Stephen Smith, Adam is suing games organiser, Mark Woolley, who trades as Absolute Airsoft.

The accident happened on March 20, 2016.

Teams of players wearing different coloured armbands played in the woods, with a game zone and a safe zone, after a safety briefing when they were told that goggles had to be worn at all times in the games zone, and that magazines had to be removed from weapons in the safe zone.

However, the writ issued at the High Court and just made publicly available, says they were not told that unfired pellets had to be cleared from guns before they were brought into the safe zone.

The writ says that Adam was using his own full-size BB gun, and another player asked if he could look at the gun which Adam had left in the games zone.

Marshalls did not require the other boy to dry fire the gun before entering the safe zone, according to the writ and he picked up the gun, and pointed it towards Adam’s face from a distance of a few inches, pulled the trigger, and a pellet hit Adam’s left eye, leaving him blind in that eye - shattering his dream of joining the Army.

The writ accuses Mr Woolley of negligence, saying he had no proper system to ensure that guns brought into the safe zone were cleared of unfired pellets, failed to ensure a marshal witnessed the boy dry-firing the gun before going into the safe zone, and failed to instruct players to dry fire weapons before bringing them into the safe zone.

Mr Woolley, of Queens Road, Marlow, is also accused of negligently allowing the boy to go into the safe zone with a loaded gun, failing to supervise him properly, failing to require players to wear eye protection at all times, and failing to take any care for Adam’s safety.

Adam, then 13, was flown to hospital by air ambulance, underwent surgery, missed a week of school, and his family had to cancel a skiing holiday. He had difficulties hiking for six months after the accident, sometimes stumbling, and it took about four months for him to learn to judge depth using just one eye says the writ.

It says his eye is shrunken and he wears a prosthetic in the daytime, suffers from aching, and that there is a small risk of sympathetic ophthalmia, a condition which can cause blindness in the good eye.