Three Marines Charged in Fatal Accident : Training: A corporal was shot and killed when procedure allegedly wasn’t followed during a live-fire exercise.

Two Camp Pendleton officers and a noncommissioned officer have been charged with dereliction of duty and negligent homicide in the accidental shooting death earlier this year of a Marine corporal.

Cpl. Fabian Morrison, 19, was shot in the right temple by a stray M-16 bullet while participating in live-fire maneuvers on Jan. 28 on a firing range at Ft. Ord, an Army base in Northern California often used by Marines for training.

The three Marines are each charged with one count of negligent homicide and two counts of dereliction of duty, said Marine Lt. Kevin Bentley on Wednesday.

Those charged are Capt. Karl A. Schwarm, 31, the commander of K Company, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines; First Lt. Timothy Devlin, 35, the safety officer of the firing range; and Staff Sgt. John S. Hoerner, 31, who was the range noncommissioned officer in charge, Bentley said.

The three are now undergoing proceedings similar to a civilian preliminary hearing, and if sufficient evidence is found to support the charges, a full court-martial will be held, Bentley said.

The maximum punishment if convicted on all counts would be dismissal, forfeiture of pay and a year and a half of confinement, Bentley said.

According to a Ft. Ord publication that cited an Army report, Morrison was one of several Marines moving down a shooting range with several lanes, with one Marine in each lane firing at a target every 50 meters and a safety noncommissioned officer in each lane supervising.

A Marine firing in the third lane had difficulty with a malfunctioning weapon at the first target, and the safety officer in that lane halted only that Marine, allowing the others to proceed to the following targets, according to the publication, called Ft. Ord Panorama.

Standard practice at the range is to halt all shooters when there is a malfunction, the publication said.

After fixing the malfunction, the Marine in the third lane continued on the course, one target behind the rest, the Panorama said.

At one point, that Marine, who was not named, inadvertently shot at the target in lane four, killing Morrison, who was the safety officer in that lane, the paper said.

The Army report said the exercise’s “training standards were not clear or practical; the safety standards were not clear or consistent; and the terrain was uneven and had dense vegetation,” according to the Panorama.

Morrison, who was from New York, had been with the Marines for 2 1/2 years and had served a tour in the Philippines, joining his last unit in January, just days before he was shot, Bentley said.