Moat’s rampage could have been long planned

Jul 11 2010 by Adam Jupp, Sunday Sun

GUNMAN Raoul Moat may have planned his rampage weeks before it happened.

The steroid-abusing bodybuilder targeted former girlfriend Sam Stobbart, 22, and her new lover Chris Brown last Saturday, within hours of being released from HMP Durham.

A day later, he fired at traffic cop PC David Rathband through the window of his patrol car after calling 999 and professing his hatred for the police.

It is understood Moat’s shooting spree was sparked by him learning his ex had started dating Mr Brown, 29, whom he believed was an officer with the Northumbria force.

But former colleagues of the 37-year-old have told the Sunday Sun he was plotting an attack on Sam even before he was locked up for common assault, for which he served 18 weeks.

Bouncers who work in Newcastle’s famous Bigg Market say he drove to the party strip with what appeared to be a gun and a samurai sword in his car, telling them of his plans.

One doorman, who asked not to be named, said: "He had been driving around in his car and was saying there was a shotgun on the passenger side.

"The police didn’t pull his car so would never have known he had it with him and he came to the Bigg Market and was telling the lads what he was going to do.

"The lads were telling him there was police all over the place and that he just needed to calm down and drive away."

Moat, of Fenham Hall Drive, in Newcastle’s West End, was jailed in early May for common assault but in March, Sam declared the pair had split up on her Facebook page.

Relatives of Sam, of Birtley, Gateshead, say their six-year relationship was stormy and occasionally violent but the mother of one of his three children would always forgive him.

In the wake of his shooting spree, her loved ones claimed he had previously brandished a firearm in a jealous fit of rage. Her grandmother Agnes Hornsby, 69, said he threatened them with a weapon after she posted another message on Facebook, saying she was going on a night out with a friend.

It is not clear how Moat had access to guns or whether the one he allegedly used to scare Sam’s family, or the one he reportedly took to the Bigg Market, are the same as the one he went on to use last week.

Moat and Sam met while he was a bouncer at Newcastle’s Liquid Envy nightclub. Over the years, he also worked the doors at a string of popular nightspots, including Kiss, in the Bigg Market and Grey’s Club, off Grey Street.

Another bouncer, who worked with him at Planet Earth, formerly on Low Friar Street, also Newcastle, said: "We worked together in the mid to late 1990s and for about six months.

"To be honest, I would say he was a stereotypical bouncer and would just go out there and loved the life that doormen had. He was always quite a big lad and used his steroids but that was not uncommon in those days."