2010 Northumbria Police manhunt

Raoul Moat, a 37-year-old former panel beater, bouncer, and tree surgeon from Newcastle upon Tyne, was released from Durham Prison on 1 July 2010 after serving an eighteen-week sentence for assaulting a nine-year-old relative. He had reportedly come to blame the police for the collapse of his business and for the end of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Samantha Stobbart, who — out of fear — had told him that her new partner, Chris Brown, was a police officer.

In the early hours of 3 July 2010, Moat shot Brown and Stobbart at a house in Birtley, Tyne and Wear, where the couple were visiting. Brown, a 29-year-old karate instructor, was killed; Stobbart was shot in the arm and abdomen and underwent liver surgery. Roughly 22 hours later, on 4 July, Moat shot police constable David Rathband as he sat in his patrol vehicle near East Denton. Rathband survived but was permanently blinded.

Northumbria Police launched what became one of the largest manhunts in modern British policing history, deploying around 160 armed officers — reinforced by other forces — along with helicopters, dogs, armoured vehicles brought from Northern Ireland, a Royal Air Force reconnaissance jet, and tracker Ray Mears. On 5 July, police disclosed that Durham Prison had warned them, before the shootings, that Moat intended to harm Stobbart, and Northumbria Police voluntarily referred the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). Following a sighting during an armed robbery in Seaton Delaval, police concentrated the search around Rothbury, Northumberland, from 6 July, setting up an exclusion zone and placing armed officers at local schools.

Two men later identified as Karl Ness and Qhuram Awan were arrested in Rothbury on 6 July and appeared in court on 8 July charged with conspiracy to commit murder and possession of a firearm with intent. On 9 July, police located Moat on the north bank of the River Coquet in Rothbury and a stand-off began. After nearly six hours of negotiation, during which officers fired an experimental long-range Taser at him, Moat shot himself; he was taken to Newcastle General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead in the early hours of 10 July 2010, ending the manhunt.

A coroner's inquest concluded in September 2011 that Moat's death was suicide, and the IPCC cleared Northumbria Police of wrongdoing over its use of the Taser; in 2014, the force disputed separate IPCC findings that it had failed to act on intelligence about Moat or adequately support the injured Rathband. Ness was convicted of the murder of Christopher Brown, conspiracy to murder, and the attempted murder of PC Rathband, and was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 40 years. Awan was convicted of conspiracy to murder and the attempted murder of PC Rathband and sentenced to life with a minimum of 20 years. David Rathband, who struggled with his blindness, died by suicide at his home in Blyth on 29 February 2012.