On August 10 2021, an apparently drunk teenager in Kenosha, Wisconsin was using the laser sight on a friend's handgun to play with her cat. The 19-year-old thought the gun was empty, but it fired during the laser play. Her 21-year-old friend was shot in his leg. He was taken to a hospital for treatment.

The teen was charged with negligent use of a weapon. The man was charged with violating bond conditions that prevented him from having a weapon.

From AP News. Thank you to Greg Makhov for bringing this to our attention.

Tags: US, Wisconsin, Gun, Weapons, Battery, Injured, Cat, Age: 10-19, Sex: Female

Twenty-four year-old Dillon Breen of Dublin was awarded €80,000 (USD $90,400) on March 6 2020, for losing 10 percent of his right eye's vision in a laser pen incident that took place when Breen was approximately 16. The award was against Syncron Limited of Ballycoolin, Dublin, the company that sold the €10 laser pen on the internet.

It was sold to a classmate of Breen who brought it to St Kevin's College on May 25 2012. Another classmate accidentally aimed the laser's green beam at Breen while a teacher was out of the classroom. Breen immediately felt a "burning sensation." At hospital he was told his retina was burned. Breen has a permanent spot in the center of his right eye, removing about 10 percent of his vision and requiring him to wear glasses.

Breen sued the school, St Kevin's and the laser pen distributor, Syncron.

Justice Michael Hanna found that the school had no responsibility. He said the teacher was entitled to be out of the classroom on necessary business, and if the school was aware of the laser it would have taken action.

Breen's suit said the laser pen was more powerful than allowed by EU directives and thus was dangerous. The judge agreed, noting it should not have been offered for sale, and that Syncron was entirely responsible for Breen's injury. Syncron did not appear in court and did not defend itself.

It is not known if Breen will be able to collect the judgement from Syncron as they are no longer trading.

From Herald.ie and the Irish Times (March 4 2020 article about the lawsuit, March 5 2020 article about the judge's decision and award)

Commentary from LaserPointerSafety.com: This is the first case we are aware of where a civil suit has been brought against a laser pointer distributor or manufacturer for an eye injury. There have been cases where government agencies have taken administrative or criminal action against illegal imports.

Tags: Ireland, Dublin, Age: 10-19, School, Color: Green, Injured, Lawsuit

Two police officers from Roma, Texas (a small city along the Rio Grande river, and a port of entry from Mexico) had lasers aimed at their eyes while on patrol in February 2019. One officer had medical attention and treatment and then returned to duty.

An assistant chief of police, Francisco Garcia, said other officers from other agencies had also had lasers aimed at them in the past 30-45 days. He said it never happened before with direct hits in the eyes that caused damage.

Garcia said "This is just one of the many tactics the cartel and the criminal organizations will use to distract officers and get us away from a certain area to start illegally crossing contraband, drugs, people, everything, they cross."

He also noted concerns over whether the laser was stand-alone such as a pointer, or whether it is mounted on a weapon.

From ValleyCentral.com and KRGV.com

Tags: US, Texas, Police, Injured, Unknown perpetrator

A Ukrainian border guard "had the functionality of his right eye reduced by 80 percent" after seeing a yellow flash through binoculars as he was observing Russian-backed forces.

The injury occurred at approximately 5 pm local time on October 1 2018.

Ophthalmologists examined the guard's eye and diagnosed a laser-induced retinal injury.

According to the Ukrainian State Border Service, this was the seventh case of Russian-led forces using blinding lasers against Ukrainian troops since 2014. At least five of these injuries were not permanent: "all of the [5] affected troops have had their eyesight almost fully restored."

From the Kyiv Post, October 2 2018. An earlier Kyiv Post story March 29 2018 has a few additional details about earlier attacks. LaserPointerSafety.com also reprinted a May 28 2018 Kyiv Post story on the topic.

Tags: Ukraine, Russia, Blinding weapons, Injured, Military, Color: Yellow

An August 29 2018 story from Shanghai Daily is headlined "Laser pointers regularly harm children's eyes: doctors"

It notes that an 8-year-old boy playing with a laser pointer suffered irreversible retinal damage to his left eye.

The story says "such cases are not rare" at the Shanghai Xinshijie Eye Hospital.

It also says that a "study conducted by the national quality authority found 29.8 percent of children have had access to laser products, laser pointers being the most common." It is not known what other, non-pointer, laser products were included in the study.

According to the story, the "government has issued a warning to alert parents not to buy laser pointers as toys for their children, but they are still widely available in local stationery stores. Most laser pointers don’t come with safety alerts to warn of the dangers present." The story did not say whether this was a national, provincial or local government warning.

From Shine News (Shanghai Daily)

Tags: China, Children, Injured, Statistics, Age: 0-9, Toy, Sex: Male

A police officer who was “horseplaying” with the laser pointer on a Taser, forgot that the weapon was armed and accidentally tased a colleague.

On March 27 2018, Officer Dan Sells of the Lafayette (Indiana) Police Department was in a hospital conference room for a debriefing, along with two other officers and a dispatcher. Sells and another officer disarmed their Taser stun guns and began shining the Taser’s laser pointer (used for aiming) at the dispatcher.

Sells became distracted for a few minutes. He then picked up the Taser, intending to continue the laser pointer horseplay. However he forgot he had armed the Taser. When he pulled the trigger to turn on the laser pointer, the Taser fired, sending the electric prongs into the dispatcher’s foot.

He received a five-day suspension for unbecoming conduct, unsatisfactory performance, misuse of department equipment and misusing a weapon.

On May 30 2018 Sells agreed to a 10-day suspension for apparently unrelated charges (in a separate incident) of unbecoming conduct, unsatisfactory performance, and violating evidence-gathering procedures.

From the Journal & Courier

Tags: US, Indiana, Police, Taser, Injured, Sex: Male

Two Chinese students have been treated for eye injuries caused by laser pointers.

In the first case, the macular area of a boy’s eyes were damaged so that he could not see an object at 10 cm. The damage was confirmed by retinal examination.

In the second case, a 15-year-old high school student also has burns on his macular area, from when a classmate aimed a laser pen at him. He could only see objects within 50 cm, and there were scars consistent with those left by clinical lasers.

Both cases were reported by Xie Airui, an eye specialist at the Ineye Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Both cases occurred between September 2017 and May 2018.

According to a May 31 2018 news story, laser pens have become popular with some schoolchildren in Chengdu. Many stationery shops sell them for prices between USD $0.80 and $31.00. in 2014 the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine warned consumers about laser pointer hazards. “But no market supervisors have taken up the matter in a serious way, according to Xu Bin, a lawyer in Chengdu.”

From China Daily via Ecns.cn

Tags: China, Children, Age: 10-19, Injured, Sex: Male

Students at a laser show in India had symptoms of eye irritation. Below is a story from The News Minute about the show.

After the “read more” link are more stories, plus speculation that the cause might be ultraviolet light, or chemical irritation from fog or smoke.

---

NYE laser show leaves 200 students in Andhra with eye irritation

The children's eyes began watering and had turned red when they got up the next morning.

Around 40 students of a private school in Andhra Pradesh's Parvathipuram village in Vizianagaram district had to be given medical treatment, after their eyes began to swell on Monday morning [January 1 2018].

The 40 students, along with 200 others, began complaining of irritation and pain in their eyes, after they were reportedly exposed to lights and lasers during a show, as part of the school's New Year's Eve celebrations.

The children's eyes began watering, and had turned red when they got up the next morning.

As the children began complaining, worried parents staged a protest and demanded answers from the school.

Following this, doctors rushed to the school and administered first-aid, before assuring those who had gathered, that the kids would not lose eyesight.

“We prescribed eye drops and ointment for the affected children,” a doctor told the Times of India.

Meanwhile, Vizianagaram district Collector Vivek Yadav was informed of the incident, and directed the Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) of Parvathipuram, P Sudarsan Dora, to visit the school along with Mandal Educational Officer P Krishna Murthy.

Circle Inspector G Rambabu also visited the school along with the officials, and spoke to the children, to collect more details regarding the case. Further details are awaited.

---

Click the “read more” link to see additional updated stories, plus speculation on the possible cause.     Click to read more...

Tags: India, Children, Laser show, Injured

A teenager from Luton, about 30 miles northwest of London, was injured by two boys, between 12 and 14 years old, who aimed a laser pen into the teen’s eyes from a distance.

According to a news story, “the boy sustained damage to his eyes and required hospital treatment.” A police spokesperson called the injuries “serious.”

Police were asking for help in finding the perpetrators of the December 4 2017 incident

From Luton Today

Tags: UK, Assault, Harassment, Injured, Age: 10-19, Unknown perpetrator, Sex: Male

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli soldiers physically assaulted a 17-year-old Palestinian girl in Hebron on the evening of June 28 2017 while she was playing with a laser pointer with friends. She was taken to the hospital after suffering from bruises across her body.

News reports did not say how the laser pointer was linked to the beating. (For example, whether the girl was aiming it at the soldiers.)

From Wafa and the Ma’an News Agency

Tags: Israel, Palestine, Assault, Injured

An Apple Inc. employee reported “discomfort” after a laser was flashed in her eye several times on February 21 2017. Another employee on March 2 reported eye pain. This is according to an April 14 “Environment Health and Safety” contractor report that was leaked to the tech blog Gizmodo.

The document lists over 70 incidents. The two which involve prototype hardware that includes, or appears to include, laser light are:

• “After BT4 user study, user advised study lead, that she experienced discomfort in her eye and said she was able to see the laser flash at several points during the study. Study lead referred her to optometrist and secured prototype unit for analysis.”
• “Employee reported eye pain after working with new prototype, thought it may be associated with use. He noticed that the security seal on the magenta (outer) case had been broken and had thought the unit may have been tampered with.”

Gizmodo wrote that “a source inside Apple speculated that this [March 2] injury may have something to do with an augmented reality product Apple may be testing, something like glasses with an overhead display.”

Another tech blog, SlashGear, speculated on how Apple might be using lasers in or near eyes: “There are several possibilities as to how the lasers mentioned in one of the incident reports might be involved in that, depending on the technologies Apple is using. For instance, laser projection – where graphics are created directly on the eye using a system of targeted laser light – has been used by several companies wanting to make a daylight-visible UI. Another alternative, and possibly a more likely one, is laser eye-tracking. That relies on using lasers to monitor eye movement in real-time, so that the wearer’s direction of gaze can be calculated. Such a system would be able to figure out what the user was looking at and potentially control a user-interface that way.”

From Gizmodo and SlashGear

Tags: Apple, Injured, Augmented reality

A 47-year-old Surrey woman was sentenced in mid-July 2016 to 240 hours of community service for illegally importing 300 over-powered lasers. One of the lasers was sold for £6 (USD $9) at a school Christmas fair and subsequently caused an eye injury to a seven-year-old boy.

Lynsey McClure had imported the lasers from a Chinese supplier who said they complied with U.K. regulations limiting laser pens to 1 milliwatt of power. Her brother, who was not charged, sold them in a stall during a school fair in December 2015. The headmaster asked her brother to stop selling the laser, but he continued.

Lynsey McClure

Jonathan Marshall, 7, purchased one of the lasers. It was later found to have an output of 127 milliwatts.

His mother said Jonathan was playing with it at home when the beam went into his eye for “a fraction of a second.” He has a retinal burn which interferes with his vision.

McClure pleaded guilty to nine product safety and consumer protection violations, including selling an unsafe product and failing to disclose the power of the laser.

The case appears to be the first where a person has been prosecuted for an illegal laser sale that led to an injury.

From the Sunday Times (subscription required to read the entire article) and the JC.com

Tags: UK, Surrey, Children, Injured, School, Eye injury - self-inflicted, Import, Age: 40-49, Sex: Female, Photo

A 14-year-old Australian permanently damaged his retinas by deliberately shining a laser pointer into his eyes “for a very brief period of time”, according to the optometrist who examined the teen.

From a November 5 news account, it appears the injury occurred on Friday October 30 2015. The boy saw a general practitioner the following Monday, who then referred the teen to Ben Armitage, a Hobart (Tasmania) optometrist.

Armitage said the boy did not feel pain during the exposure, but he immediately lost visual acuity. “His vision is down to about 25 percent of what we call 20/20 vision and unfortunately at this stage it’s unlikely that vision is ever going to recover.”

Retina of one of the teen’s two eyes that were damaged by a self-inflicted laser pointer exposure. The injury occurred near the macula. At the center of the macula is the fovea, responsible for sharp central vision.

The damaged area is still swollen; Armitage hopes that some vision may be restored when the swelling recedes.

An Optometry Tasmania spokesperson warned parents not to allow children unsupervised access to laser pointers “and, in fact, better off trying to warn them off because we’ve just seen in this particular case where the future lifestyle of this young person has been seriously affected.”

From ABC (Australia) News

Tags: Australia, Injured, Age: 10-19, Sex: Male, Photo, Eye injury - self-inflicted

An October 5 2015 report in the British Medical Journal Case Reports describes a public bus driver who suffered retinal injury due to a schoolboy aiming a red laser beam into a mirror on the bus, reflecting into the driver’s eyes.



The 44-year-old driver stared into the laser several times, as he tried to identify the person holding the laser. He suffered blurred vision in his right eye immediately after the exposure, but waited 6 months before having his first complete eye exam.

The exam showed “spot-like retinal pigment epithelium disturbances temporal to the fovea of the right eye, with no abnormalities in his left eye.” The authors stated that “The subjective complaints and objective ophthalmological findings of this patient were consistent and strongly suggested that the repetitive exposure of the eye to the reflected laser spot 6 months previously had caused subtle but detectable injury to the macula.”

The authors concluded with two “Learning points”:

• “We suggest that no laser pointers of any class are made available to children, since they are unlikely to understand the risks of permanent retinal damage.”

• “For the safety of users and the general public, even low-energy handheld laser pointers should not be sold to children.”

The authors did not identify the location of the incident, but it may be Germany since three of the four authors’ institutions were in Germany. Additional analysis and commentary is below (click the “Read More…” link).

From Thanos S, Böhm MRR, Meyer zu Hörste M, et al. “Retinal damage induced by mirror-reflected light from a laser pointer” BMJ Case Reports. Retrieved online: 2015 Nov 05, doi:10.1136/bcr-2015- 210311.
Click to read more...

Tags: Germany, Bus, Driver, Injured, Children, Scientific study or journal, Age: 40-49, Age: 10-19, Color: Red, Photo

In three separate cases, children in the area of Bologna have suffered eye damage caused by laser pointers.

The cases were reported in mid-September 2015 by the St. Ursula Ophthalmology Hospital in Bologna. One of the children was 10; the other two were 13.

The injuries were caused by laser pointers bought by their parents (in two cases) or grandmother (in the third case) in markets in Florence or Bologna. One child had a slight loss of vision, another had significant loss in both eyes, and a third has almost lost his sight and is legally blind.

A public prosecutor, Valter Giovannini, has opened an investigation for aggravated manslaughter against unknown assailants. This seems to indicate that in all three cases, the laser pointer bought by or for the children was used against them by another person.

As a result of the report, Carabinieri NAS (Nuclei Antisofisticazioni e Sanità or “Anti Fraud Squad”), a special police force operating under the Italian ministry of health, seized fifteen illegally-sold laser pointers.

The hospital warned the public not to purchase green laser pointers sold “on the street, in the stalls and fairs.” A spokesperson said higher-powered pointers such as those aimed at players in stadiums were to be avoided. Professional laser pointers used in lectures should not be a problem.

From Corriere di Bologna. Thanks to Alberto Kellner Ongaro for bringing this to our attention.

Tags: Italy, Children, Injured, Assault, Eye injury - self-inflicted, Color: Green, Age: 10-19

A man in Pittsburgh was stabbed with a knife, after he approached two people and asked them to stop shining a laser pointer at him. The victim was with friends on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, around March 15 2015. After asking for the laser aiming to stop, the male suspect told the victim “You shouldn’t have walked up on us like that” and stabbed him in the upper arm with a blade about 5-6” long. The second suspect was a female. University of Pittsburgh campus police were asking for the public’s help in finding the suspects.

From CBS Pittsburgh

Tags: US, Pennsylvania, Injured, Stabbed, Assault, Harassment, Age: Unknown

A woman was blinded by a laser at the Burning Man art and technology festival, according to a September 5 2014 post by Richard W. DeVaul, head of Google’s Rapid Evaluation Team.

DeVaul’s colleague was working as a volunteer when she was struck in the left eye by a “high-power, hand-held green laser, most likely a 1W 532 nm toy from China”.

Burning Man took place August 25 through September 1, 2014, at Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. As of the September 5 post, DeVaul said the woman “still has not regained vision in her left eye and it is possible that she never will.”
Click to read more...

Tags: US, Nevada, Burning Man, Injured, Color: Green

A woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma was shot in her leg after investigating a laser pointer being aimed onto her house. She went to a hospital, was found to be in fair condition, and was released after a few hours.

On May 22 2014, at about 10:30 pm, 50-year-old Dawn Adams went out her back door to investigate the laser light on her home. She asked the person to stop because the laser dot was upsetting the family dogs. They heard gunshots and thought the person might have shot the dogs. Adams and her son Philip Klimcak, 23, went outside and saw a person dressed in dark clothes who started walking the length of the house, “spraying bullets the whole way.” (Neighbors reported hearing about six shots; a reporter later found almost a dozen holes in the house.)

Klimcak pushed his mother back to protect her. A bullet went through the home structure and into Adams’ leg.

Philip Klimcak, in dark clothing, speaks with KTUL reporter Caitlin Alexander outside his mother’s home.

Police believe the weapon was a pistol. They are looking for a suspect, but do not have a good description. Klimcak said it may have been a gang initiation.

There was no immediate information regarding whether the laser was on the pistol or was a separate stand-alone device.

From KTUL.com, Tulsa World, and KJRH.com

Tags: US, Oklahoma, Assault, Gun, Injured, Shot, Home, Harassment, Unknown perpetrator

On April 13, 2007, three moviegoers were “beaten and stabbed after they asked a group of males to stop disrupting a film with a laser pointer.” On Feb. 5 2011, one of the males was found guilty of assault causing bodily harm, and common assault. This follows a March 2010 guilty finding for another attacker.

A previous News item described the attack in more detail.

From the Ottawa Citizen

Tags: Canada, Ottawa, Movie, Assault, Stabbed, Injured, Laser lout, Sex: Male

In Reno, Nevada, police officers shot and critically injured a man who aimed a replica pistol's laser beam at them.

Officers responded to a report of a suicidal man with a gun. They ordered 44-year-old Charles James Bishop to drop the realistic-looking pistol. When he raised it towards them and the laser moved towards the officers, they fired.

More details from RGJ.com

Tags: US, Reno, Weapons, Age: 10-19, Sex: Male, Injured