Gunman Raoul Moat was “no psycho” and may have killed himself in an “involuntary reaction” to being Tasered by police, his brother has said.
Angus Moat is convinced he could have prevented his younger brother’s death but said police would not let him intervene during the tense six-hour stand-off which ended with a fatal gunshot at 1.15am on Saturday.
The tax officer, 39, said his brother was a sensitive person who may have been suffering a breakdown when he shot his former girlfriend, killed her new boyfriend and then turned his gun on a police officer.
After being cornered on a riverbank in Rothbury, Northumberland – following a seven-day manhunt – Moat, 37, told police that nobody cared about him.
Mr Moat, of Newcastle, had not seen his brother for several years but immediately contacted police and offered to talk to him, only to be told it could make the situation “more volatile”.
Mr Moat questioned why two electronic stun guns were used in the effort to bring Moat down. He suggested the shock from the stun gun may have caused Moat to pull the trigger on the shotgun that he had been holding to his head throughout the stand-off. Mr Moat said: “I’m thinking – you discharge a Taser on a man who is soaked to the skin, in a rainstorm, who has got a gun pointed at his head, with his finger on the trigger?
“What he did was totally wrong, totally monstrous and I am not trying to defend or excuse it,” said Mr Moat. “But this was not a case of some guy just deciding to be a psycho gun nut because that is not what my brother was.”
Meanwhile, police faced further embarrassment over their hunt for Raoul Moat after two T-shirts were found yards from where he had been camping.
An orange T-shirt – believed to be the distinctive top the former nightclub doorman was wearing in CCTV captured in B&Q in Newcastle – was lying next to a light blue T-shirt at Wagtail Farm, Rothbury. The clothing was discovered by a newspaper photographer at 4pm, who then alerted police to his find.
The discovery raises questions as to whether the highly trained police search teams missed them or Moat had returned to his makeshift den after it had been discovered by a farmer last week. The campsite is just 300 yards from where the police set up their temporary headquarters on an industrial estate in the town.
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