Raoul Moat: The Facebook Legend, The Shrine And Mother Blames Sam Stobbart
RAOUL Moat continues to make front-page news two days after he shot himself in the head: “RIP Raoul Moat You Legend!
Moat shot his ex-lover Samantha Stobbart, mother to his daughter Chanel, murdered her boyfriend Chris Brown, 29, and shot PC David Rathband.
Facebook Fans
The Sun’s front page yells “TWISTED”.
There are “12,000” people lending their names, or ones they’ve made up for the web, to “Facebook tributes”. And the site of Moat’s deaths has becomes a “shrine”.
Twisted, indeed, readers. If anyone is going to erect a shrine to someone they didn’t know and never met, it should be the Sun, which enacted a land grab for Baby Peter Connelly’s grave.
And the NoTW, the Sun’s sister paper, boasted of having obtained a video of Moat holding a gun to his face as he was about the use it. And what with him being a daddy to the poor lambs, and all. As Ed Balls might say, “As a dad…” Because being a dad is tabloid shorthand for caring.
The Expert
But what appeal does Raoul Moat hold to some?
Criminologist David Wilson tells Sky News, that Moat had tapped into “that dispossessed, white working-class, masculine mentality“. He had been transformed into a “kind of anti-hero“.
The Comments
Here’s an example of one of the less reasoned comments on Facebook:
“At his court appearance they would have handcuffed him to a ‘policewoman’ to prove a point,” suggested one. “If there had been any police ‘women’ armed with guns he should have opened fire on them and taken one down with him. Women are the problem today.”
Tom Dwyer writes:
“Raoul you are 110 per cent legend. Only shame is the copper survived.“
By The Riverbank in Rothbury
The storm drain where Raoul Moat hid for days before his final stand-off has turned into a bizarre tourist attraction. Scores of visitors flocked yesterday to the culvert in the Northumberland village of Rothbury to have their picture taken.
Among the hundreds of media taking pictures of the scene and pictures of peoples at the scene are messages left by people who seem to have known Raoul Moat.
Says the Mail:
One note read: ‘Raoul Moat – Mis-Understood. No need to feel trapped or bullied now. You have won hearts of the real people now. It’s just a shame they didn’t listen years ago. Now your (sic) back together with your gran. She loved and understood you.’
He Hated The Police
COP hater Raoul Moat was so desperate to kill an officer he tried to get into a police station. He stared through windows of the locked building in Ashington and tried the doors during the manhunt.
The only officer there thought a colleague was trying to get in but Moat left before he opened the door.
The Sun has ever more:
The ex-bouncer then went to a McDonald’s where another cop was eating but the fugitive took no action. A source said: “Both had very lucky escapes.
As this policeman in uniform? Has anyone ever seen a uniformed copper eating in a McDonald’s?
The Big Question: What Could Paul Gascoigne Have Done?
Troubled Paul Gascoigne did not really seem to know Raoul Moat – despite rushing to the siege site. Cabbie Brian Hutchinson say… “He kept on asking me what the bloke with the gun’s name was. I’d say, ‘You can’t be good friends if you can’t remember. It’s Raoul Moat’. And Gazza would go, ‘Oh aye, Moaty, Moaty’.”
Don’t Blame The Police
The Daily Mirror leads with more news from Marissa Reid, who dated Moat, gave him two children and was, as she claimed, raped and beaten by him. She wasn’t there when Moat died but she knows what happened:
“Nobody can blame the police – they should blame Raoul because he was the killer and he was the one who had six hours to put that gun down but he didn’t.”
Blame The Police And Sam Stobbart
The heartbroken mother and sister of murdered Chris Brown yesterday blamed the police and his injured lover Samantha Stobbart for his death.
Mum Sally Brown said police should have done more after being warned by jail officials about Moat’s vengeful state. She said: “When the police had that warning, they should have taken it further. So yes I blame them but I also blame Samantha because she knew what this man was like. She knew what he was capable of and yet she put my son up front.
“Why tell him my son was a policeman? Why do that? Why goad the man? She knew what he was capable of. Why do it? So yes I blame her.”
Says PC David Rathand?
“I bear no malice towards the man who shot me, but now wish to move on with my life.”
What Says The Kids?
More from Marissa Reid. She helps the Mirror deliver the front-page headline:
“OUR DADDY MUST GO TO HELL.”
The “killer’s kids did not cry at his death”.
No, not Chanel Moat, the toddler who has not been told her dad is dead.
“…when Marissa Reid, 32, tenderly knelt down and clutched her daughters to tell them Daddy was in Heaven, she expected tears. She got none.”
The reaction:
The older girl asked her: “Why is he in Heaven, Mam? He should be going down there for what he’s done.”
The Public Execution
Angus Moat, 39, later described his brother as sensitive and “no psycho”. And telling how he watched on TV as cops surrounded him shortly before he shot himself in the head, he added: “It’s like, you know, they’re working up to what could be a public execution in modern Britain of my little brother.”
Chris’s mum Sally said: “I saw a clip yesterday of his brother saying that – what did Moat do to my boy if he didn’t publicly execute him? What is that if it is not an execution?”
The Story In Pictures:
Posted: 13th, July 2010 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comments (23) | TrackBack | Permalink
