On July 1, 2010, Raoul Moat walked out of Durham Prison.

Two days later, one man was dead.

Moat’s former girlfriend had been shot and seriously wounded.

Within another day, a police officer would also be shot.

Then Moat disappeared.

What followed was a six-day armed manhunt involving scores of specialist officers, armored vehicles, helicopters and even Royal Air Force surveillance equipment.

But the story did not begin with a fugitive hiding in the countryside.

It began with anger.

Jealousy.

A relationship that had ended.

And a lie told by a frightened former partner who apparently believed it might keep Moat away from her.

At 37, Moat was an imposing figure.

A former bodybuilder, he stood approximately six feet three inches tall and weighed around 17 stone.

He had worked as a panel beater, bouncer and tree surgeon.

He was also known for violence and sudden eruptions of anger.

Between February and July 2010, he served an 18-week sentence at Durham Prison following a conviction for assaulting a nine-year-old relative.

Moat had three children, including a young daughter with his former girlfriend, Samantha Stobbart.

The relationship between Moat and Samantha had ended.

Samantha had moved on.

Her new partner was 29-year-old karate instructor Chris Brown.

But Samantha was frightened of Moat.

According to the source, she told him that Chris was a police officer.

He wasn’t.

She apparently hoped the claim would make Moat keep his distance.

Instead, it became entangled with Moat’s existing hatred of the police.

Moat blamed police for many of his problems.

He believed they had interfered with his life.

He blamed them for the collapse of his business.

He believed they had taken too much from him.

When he emerged from prison on July 1, that resentment was already there.

Then came the early hours of July 3.

Moat went to the house where Samantha was with Chris.

According to Moat’s later account, he crouched beneath an open living-room window for roughly 90 minutes, listening.

At around 2:40 a.m., Chris came outside.

Moat shot him at close range with a shotgun.

Chris Brown was killed.

Moat then fired through the living-room window.

Samantha was struck in the arm and abdomen.

She survived but required surgery to her liver and was placed under armed guard while hospitalized.

Moat had now killed the man he believed was connected to the police.

But authorities subsequently told him something that shattered one part of the story he had constructed in his mind.

Chris Brown was not a police officer.

Samantha had lied.

She later publicly acknowledged doing so.

Her explanation was fear.

She thought telling Moat that her new boyfriend was a police officer might protect her.

It didn’t.

And learning the truth did not end Moat’s violence.

By then, his focus had expanded.

The police themselves had become targets.

Around 12:45 a.m. on July 4, PC David Rathband was sitting inside a police vehicle near the A1 and A69 at East Denton.

Moat shot him.

Rathband suffered devastating injuries to his head and upper body.

He survived the shooting but was left blind.

According to reporting cited in the source, Moat had telephoned police shortly before the attack.

He allegedly taunted officers and indicated what he intended to do.

After shooting Rathband, he contacted them again.

The calls provided a disturbing window into Moat’s thinking.

He blamed police.

He blamed Samantha.

He continued insisting that her new partner had been connected to officers even after being told otherwise.

He presented himself as the victim of a system that had ruined his life.

He claimed he had been harassed and persecuted.

He complained about his imprisonment.

He said he had tried to live legitimately.

And he threatened more violence.

At one point, he told police he had hostages.

He warned officers not to approach him.

Most chillingly, he made clear that he did not expect to be taken alive.

“I’m not on the run,” he said during one recorded exchange reproduced in the source.

“I am coming to get you.”

The threat transformed an already horrific double shooting and murder into a national security crisis.

Police could not assume Moat was simply hiding.

They had to operate on the possibility that he was actively hunting officers.

The response became enormous.

According to the source, approximately 160 armed officers were deployed.

Northumbria Police received specialist reinforcements from multiple forces, including London’s Metropolitan Police.

Armored anti-terrorism vehicles were transported from Northern Ireland.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed that an RAF Tornado GR4 equipped with reconnaissance technology was used for nighttime sweeps around the Rothbury area.

Armed officers searched homes.

Dogs were deployed.

Helicopters circled overhead.

Roads were checked.

Schools were temporarily locked down.

Residents were warned.

Police searched abandoned and rural properties.

At various points, officers detained people and raided locations after receiving information suggesting Moat might be there.

Again and again, they came up empty.

Meanwhile, another piece of evidence emerged.

Moat had left behind a lengthy letter.

According to the source, it ran to 49 pages.

Its message was unmistakable.

Moat said the public did not need to fear him.

Police did.

He wrote that he would not stop until he was dead.

In his own narrative, everything important had been taken away from him.

His children.

His freedom.

His house.

Samantha.

His daughter.

But his account repeatedly placed responsibility outside himself.

His own violence was reframed as something other people had forced upon him.

Samantha eventually issued a message through the media urging him to stop.

She also publicly revealed the truth about Chris Brown.

He had never been a police officer.

She had said that because she was scared.

There were also reports that Moat had posted a list of potential targets on Facebook involving members of Samantha’s family.

Police therefore faced a dangerous uncertainty.

Nobody knew exactly where he was.

Nobody knew precisely whom he might attack next.

And officers had reason to believe he remained armed.

By July 6, the operation had spread through the Rothbury area.

A vehicle believed to have been connected to Moat was located.

An air exclusion zone and a ground exclusion zone were established.

Two men initially thought to be hostages were found and later arrested.

Buildings on a disused farm were stormed after a landowner noticed signs somebody might have entered.

Still no Moat.

Police repeatedly appealed directly to him.

They urged him to surrender.

They invoked his children.

They asked him not to leave them with the memory of their father dying violently.

He did not give himself up.

The manhunt continued.

And then, amid one of the darkest police operations Britain had seen in years, came an almost surreal moment.

Former England footballer Paul Gascoigne arrived near the police operation.

Gascoigne claimed to know Moat and brought food and drink, reportedly hoping to persuade him to surrender.

Police did not allow him access.

The bizarre episode became one of the most remembered side stories of the manhunt.

But behind that spectacle, the danger remained very real.

Moat still had a gun.

Police believed he was still prepared to use it.

Finally, on July 9, officers found him in Rothbury.

After six days on the run, Moat was contained in an open area.

He remained armed.

What followed was a standoff lasting nearly six hours.

Negotiators tried to persuade him to surrender.

Police needed to end the confrontation without another person being shot.

Eventually, according to the source, officers used a Taser.

It did not bring the standoff to the peaceful conclusion they wanted.

Moat shot himself in the head.

He was transported to Newcastle General Hospital and pronounced dead.

The fugitive at the center of the nationwide hunt was gone.

But the damage he left behind extended far beyond his own death.

Chris Brown had been murdered.

Samantha Stobbart had been seriously wounded.

PC David Rathband had been blinded.

And investigators established that Moat had not operated entirely alone.

Two men, Karl Ness and Qhuram Awan, were convicted for their roles in the crimes connected with Moat.

According to the source, Ness received three concurrent life sentences with a minimum term of 40 years for offenses including the murder of Chris Brown, conspiracy to murder and the attempted murder of PC Rathband.

Awan received concurrent life sentences for conspiracy to murder and the attempted murder of Rathband, with a minimum term of 20 years.

Both also received sentences for robbery.

Another man, Scott Raeburn, received a shorter sentence after moving a van used in connection with the shootings and concealing items from it.

Yet even after the trials, the consequences continued.

David Rathband had survived being shot.

But survival did not mean his life returned to what it had been.

The attack left him blind.

Approximately 18 months later, on February 29, 2012, Rathband was found dead at his home.

His death was ruled suicide.

That tragedy became another part of Moat’s legacy.

It is tempting to describe the entire episode as the story of an armed fugitive who lost control.

But that framing risks hiding something important.

Moat’s violence did not begin when police launched the manhunt.

The source describes an established history of violent behavior before July 2010.

He had already been convicted of assault.

His former girlfriend was frightened enough of him to invent a police connection in the hope of keeping him away.

Once released, he did not simply disappear into anger.

He acquired a weapon.

He went to Samantha’s home.

He killed Chris Brown.

He shot Samantha.

He later shot a police officer.

He issued threats.

He wrote that police should fear him.

He warned that the violence would continue.

Whatever grievances Moat believed he had, they do not transfer responsibility for those decisions to his victims.

The lie about Chris Brown being a police officer explains part of what Moat believed.

It does not justify what he did.

Neither does his resentment toward police.

Neither does jealousy.

Neither does the collapse of his relationship.

Those details help explain the narrative Moat created for himself.

They do not make that narrative true.

The scale of the police response also reveals how dangerous authorities believed the situation had become.

Dozens upon dozens of armed officers.

Specialist reinforcements.

Armored vehicles.

Aerial surveillance.

Search dogs.

School lockdowns.

Road checks.

Restricted zones.

For almost a week, communities in northeast England lived around the movements of one armed man whose next decision could not be predicted.

The case also generated an uncomfortable media debate.

Moat was repeatedly described through his size, reputation and image as a “hard man.”

Critics argued that intense coverage risked transforming an abusive killer into an anti-establishment folk figure.

That distortion matters.

Because behind the spectacle of helicopters, armed police, celebrity appearances and a dramatic final standoff were victims.

Chris Brown was not merely the first casualty in a famous manhunt.

He was a 29-year-old man who was shot dead.

Samantha was not merely “Moat’s ex.”

She was a woman who, according to the source, had been frightened enough to invent a story in an attempt to keep him away and was subsequently shot.

David Rathband was not merely the officer whose shooting intensified the chase.

He was a man whose life was permanently altered when Moat attacked him.

That is where the story belongs.

Not with the mythology that grew around the fugitive.

But with what his actions did to everyone else.

On July 1, 2010, Raoul Moat left Durham Prison.

By July 3, Chris Brown was dead and Samantha Stobbart had been shot.

By July 4, PC David Rathband had been shot and blinded.

For the next six days, armed officers hunted Moat across northeast England while communities waited to see whether he would attack again.

On July 9, police finally surrounded him.

Hours of negotiation followed.

Then came a gunshot.

The manhunt was over.

But for the people whose lives Moat had entered with a shotgun, the consequences were only beginning.