THE loss of a piece of equipment by a Royal Marine recruit led him to take his own life on a railway line, a coroner concluded today.

Philip Spinney, senior coroner for Devon, Plymouth & Torbay, criticised failures in the mental healthcare of 18-year-old Connor Clark, who used a duvet to scale a razor wire fence at the commando training centre in Lympstone before being struck by a train in June 2021.

The teenager had made comments about being called a “failure” and the “worst recruit,” and was worried about losing weekend leave for misplacing the blank firing adaptor for his weapon.