Crimes
In the early hours of Saturday morning on 3rd July, Moat approached his former partner’s friend’s home. He was armed with a sawn-off shotgun and a bag of homemade bullets. When Samantha Stobbart and her new 29-year-old partner, Christopher Brown, left the house at 2:40am, Samantha saw Moat and screamed a warning. Christopher tried to protect Sam and Moat shot twice at him at close range. Christopher staggered bleeding, defenceless and fell onto the grass. Moat walked up and shot him point blank. Moat didn't know the man he had just killed and believed he had killed a policeman. Christopher Brown was though a father of three.
Moat went after Samantha who had fled back inside. He fired through the window hitting her twice in the stomach. According to Agnes Hornsby, Samantha's grandmother: "[Raoul] said himself the only reason that he shot her where he shot her was so she couldn’t wear a bikini and show other men her figure - that was typical Raoul. Nobody else was allowed to look at Samantha.”
Doctors later had to cut the 22-year-old’s stomach open to examine the extent of her internal organ damage. CCTV captured Moat just once as he sauntered off into the night.
The next morning Moat rang a friend to say that the shootings had lifted a huge cloud off his shoulders and now he’s "full of beans". That afternoon, police announced they were after Raoul Moat. They made 28 arrests while trying to track him down. The shootings occurred just four weeks after gunman Derek Bird killed 12 people in Cumbria and national news channels began speculating that another spree killer was on the loose.
Andy McAlistair, an old friend of Moat's, answered a knock at the door and "nearly s**t [himself]" when he saw the wanted criminal standing there. He tried to persuade Moat to turn himself in and claim the murder was a crime of passion in a ploy to reduce sentence. However, Moat was unimpressed with the plan and left. Andy rang the police...but so did Moat.
On Saturday 4th June at 12:31am he told a 999 operator: “Hello there, this is the gunman from Birtley last night, er, my name is Raoul Moat...um, what I’m phoning about is to tell you exactly why I have done what I have done right? Now my girlfriend has been having an affair behind my back with one of your officers, this gentleman that I shot last night...I am hunting for officers now.”
He had declared war on the police in revenge for a lifetime of perceived persecution. Minutes later Moat spotted an unarmed police patrol officer sat in his car at a roundabout west of Newcastle. The experienced officer knew the intersection was a favourite getaway route for criminals. Video from the police car showed Moat circling in an accomplice's black Lexus. Moat shot twice at 42-year-old father of two, PC David Rathband. He was blinded by the first shot and played dead to avoid being fired at again. After Moat left the scene David used his radio and was taken to hospital in critical condition.
