Folk singer ‘shot in the face with BB gun pellets’ in Somerset

Folk singer Cara Dillon has said she was shot in the face by pellets from a suspected BB gun while walking through a Somerset town.

Ms Dillon, from Dungiven, Co Londonderry, was one of two people hit in separate incidents in Frome on Wednesday evening.

The 48-year-old said she and her husband Sam Lakeman were on the corner of Bath Street and Cork Street when a vehicle drove past with the window down.

“We both heard an automatic BB or Airsoft gun fire about eight to 12 shots and I was hit in the face several times,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“My left eyeball was hit, my cheek and around my eye.

“It felt like someone had thrown a handful of stones at me, it was very painful.”

She said the incident left her “in tears” and she could not open her eye.

“While on the phone to the police, Sam started looking for pellets on the ground and found about seven,” she said.

She said the police were on the scene “very quickly” and were “very helpful and considerate”.

She said she was left with a “sore eye, headache and a bruise appearing on my cheek”, but she had visited the optician and “everything seems fine” with her eye.

In a statement provided to Sky News, Avon and Somerset Police said: “Officers are investigating two reports of individuals being hit by a suspected BB gun pellet in Bath Street and Rodden Road in Frome.

“Thankfully, we do not believe anyone has been seriously injured or required any medical treatment and enquiries into the incident are ongoing.”

Ms Dillon won album of the year at the 2010 BBC Radio 2 folk awards and is a regular performer at Glastonbury.