It was a manhunt that captured the attention of the nation, as violent killer Raoul Moat evaded police for nearly a week after shooting dead his ex-girlfriend’s new partner and blinding an officer
Fifteen years on from the dramatic moment when Raoul Moat was caught with an illegal sawn-off shotgun in his hands, the two firearms officers who captured him have spoken for the first time about the fugitive’s erratic behaviour and his final hours before he turned the gun on himself on on July 10, 2010.
Moat, a 37-year-old bouncer from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, had been released from prison days earlier, after serving an 18-week sentence for an assault on his nine-year-old daughter. The former bodybuilder had received the news shortly before his release that his ex-girlfriend, Samantha Stobbart – mother of his youngest child – was in a new relationship with Chris Brown, who he was led to believe was an undercover police officer.
Upon release, Moat posted a chilling Facebook update that read: “Just got out of jail, I’ve lost everything, my business, my property and to top it all off my lass of six years has gone off with someone else. I’m not 21 and I can’t rebuild my life. Watch and see what happens.”
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In the ensuing days, he used the social media site to taunt Northumbria police, as he played a sick game of cat-and-mouse, following a murderous rampage – which started in the early hours of July 3, 2010, when he stalked Samantha and Chris, a 29-year-old karate instructor, to a home they were visiting.
After crouching under the open window of their living room for 90 minutes, Moat fired through the living room window, hitting Samantha in the stomach and arm. When Chris left the house to confront him, Moat fired fatal shots into his head at close range, before fleeing the property.
Adam Twigg and Damian Sharp were firearms officers with West Yorkshire Police at the time, and were called on to provide an armed guard for Samantha, as she recovered from surgery in hospital.
Less than 24 hours after his first killing, Moat blasted PC David Rathband in the face as the officer sat in his police vehicle. Just 12 minutes before his attack, Moat had called the police to tell them his intention. He rang back after the shooting to complain the force were “not taking me seriously” – showing no remorse. He then went on the run, making his way to the town of Rothbury in Northumberland and surviving by eating dead mice as he descended into paranoia.
After a task force of 160 officers, using guidance from wilderness expert Ray Mears, failed to catch Moat for several days, Adam and Damian were put on active searching duty, tasked with finding the shotgun used by the killer. By this point, Moat had left evidence of living rough – including a makeshift campsite in Rothbury, where he’d left a dictaphone containing hours of rants against the police.
Chillingly, he also stated his intention to keep murdering, saying on the tape: “For every lie I see in that paper, any paper, I will kill an innocent member of the public.”
“One of the jobs we got was to go and investigate a graveyard where a groundsperson had come across some disturbed earth and had not buried anybody in this particular area for decades. So we got sent up there with a shovel,” recalls Adam. “Knowing what I know now, I think he’d put his gun there,” says Damian. “But he’d removed it again before we got there.”
After hours of fruitless digging, the pair made their way to a local bakery, where the owner had promised to hand over any treats that hadn’t sold by the end of their shift. “We’re in there with all this kit on, and I’m driving the ARV [armed-response vehicle],” Damian remembers. “Twiggy’s in the passenger seat and I tell him we’ll head down the road and turn right, near the river. I take a big bite of a cream bun and all the cream flops down the front of my vest. Just then I look up and there he is, standing with the shotgun in his hand.”
“As I’m looking along the riverbank I clock this elderly couple who are walking backwards,” says Adam. “They’ve also spotted Moat, but luckily he’s staring into the river and hasn’t noticed them, or us approaching him from behind.”
The next few seconds are still crystal-clear in both men’s minds. “He turned around, pointed the gun at us as we’re getting out of the car with our G36s [assault rifles used by police], then turned the gun to his ear,” recalls Damian. “I’m thinking, ‘just don’t involve the elderly couple’, because that’s when we would have had to shoot him first.”
Trained to spot tiny details in body language, Adam got the impression the cornered Moat was no longer a threat to them – only to himself. “I saw he had his thumb inside of the trigger guard,” he explains. “He couldn’t bring his gun to bear without changing his hand position. We started shouting at him to put the weapon down, but he just walked off sideways, holding the gun to his head.”
Over the next six hours, Adam and Damian held Moat at gunpoint as he ranted and raved about his hatred for the police, saying he wished he had “finished off” the blinded PC Rathband. He also complained bitterly about his family, claiming they’d all disowned him and that he hated them all.
Negotiators turned up to try to reason with him – and then legendary England footballer Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne appeared at the scene, offering to bring Moat “chicken and lager” if he gave himself up. Gazza later admitted he was under the influence and had mistaken Moat for his mate.
As night fell and the hours wore on, Moat’s mindset seemed to change. “The vibe I got from him was that he would never surrender, and as time went on he was getting more desperate,” says Adam. “Eventually he changed the position of the weapon at the side of his head, at which point two colleagues fired the XRep Taser [a long-range Taser that operates without wires] at him, and then he pulled the trigger and shot himself in the head.”
Moat was pronounced dead in hospital, the victims of his sick crimes left without justice.
PC Rathband died by suicide 18 months after his life-changing injuries, and his daughter took up the Olympic torch he had planned to carry in the run-up to the 2012 London Games. She ran with it blindfolded in his honour.
The 15-day inquest into Moat’s death ruled that he had died by suicide, while an Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation found there was no evidence of misconduct by officers, including the two who had fired the new, untested XRep X12 Taser at Moat seconds before his self-inflicted gunshot wound.
In 2023, Moat’s daughter Chantelle told the Mirror how her father had terrorised her as a child, inflicting cruel punishments on her and beating her pet dog to death outside her bedroom door. “My father has always been a monster. That is all I have ever known him as. When I was young, there was no monster under my bed – he slept next door to me,” she said, adding that the hero-worship of her dad in the years since his death was “sickening”. We were better off with him dead. I don’t mourn him. I mourn the dad I should have had.”
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