Police have appealed to a man on the run after three people were shot to make contact with them, saying: “Enough people have been hurt.”
They are hunting Raoul Thomas Moat, who is suspected of critically injuring his former partner, killing her boyfriend, and wounding a police officer.
Moat, who was released from prison on Thursday, is suspected of shooting the couple in Gateshead early on Saturday, then the officer at East Denton, Newcastle early on Sunday.
Detective Chief Superintendent Neil Adamson said Moat mistakenly believed that his former partner, named locally as Samantha Stobbart, was having an affair with a Northumbria police officer.
Mr Adamson said the man shot dead, Chris Brown, who had moved to the area from Slough, had never been a Northumbria police officer and was not connected with the force in any way. He said Miss Stobbart was injured but alive and Pc David Rathband, shot early on Sunday, was seriously injured. He said he knew Moat was concerned for the future well-being of his three children.
“For their sake, this has to stop now,” he said.
“These are not the memories that your children need to have of their father. Enough people have been hurt. You need to make contact with us now.”
Mr Brown and Miss Stobbart were targeted in the early hours of Saturday morning, at around 2.40am, when the gunman fired a shot through Miss Stobbart’s living room window. Moments later her partner – a karate instructor – left the house, only to be struck down around 50 metres from the front door.
Less than 24 hours later, a man detectives identified as Moat was linked to the shooting in which Pc Rathband, married with two children, and with 10 years on the force, was seriously hurt. The uniformed motor patrol officer was blasted as he was carrying out a “static patrol” on a roundabout joining the A1 and A69 at around 12.45am. He is currently being treated in Newcastle General Hospital.
Moat, 37, from Newcastle, had just been released from Durham prison after serving a sentence for assault. He is believed to be a former nightclub bouncer.
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