Raoul Moat - Murderer, but definitely NOT a legend

IT WAS one of the biggest manhunts the country has ever seen and it ended with the death of the man at the heart of it.

Raoul Moat

By shooting himself Raoul Moat did one good thing and saved the taxpayers in this country millions of pounds that we would have had to find to house him at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for the rest of his life.

I have no sympathy for this killer. He got what was deserved. His last words told you all he thought about killing an innocent man, injuring his ex-girlfriend and blinding a policeman;

“No-one cares about me”

What has me perplexed is that someone set a fan page up on Facebook. A young woman named Siobhan O’Dowd set up the page ‘RIP Raoul Moat you Legend’ which has since been taken down by her, as Facebook refused to do so.

She said in an radio interview with Talksport’s Ian Collins broadcast on Wednesday, July 14, that she plans to put the page up again and wasn’t quite sure why she took it down.

When asked during the interview why he was a legend she replied “Legends get talked about – and he is getting talked about.”

Ian Collins, the presenter, stated that legends have usually done something to make them a legend to which she replied: “You all think he’s a bad person because of what you’ve read in the papers.”

Mr Collins responded: “No, I think he’s a bad person because he’s killed one, nearly killed another and blinded a policeman.”

Siobhan O’Dowd went onto say that Moat was a legend because he “hid from police for a week... that were funny. I think he’s a legend for keeping the police on their toes.”

This woman is deluded and wrong. Raoul Moat was in no way a legend and the 30,000 people that joined this group are as deluded as she is.

What went wrong in this country where a murderer became someone to look up to as a legend?

Moat’s brother was interviewed by Sky News, which they made sure to mention he wasn’t paid for. He said he and his uncle were refused the right to go and speak to Moat and calm him down. Of course you were, his brother in the same breath stated they hadn’t spoken for years but his brother was a gentle man, not a psycho, just a troubled soul.

Well this troubled soul murdered an innocent man; he does not deserve sympathy or reverence. What next? Fan pages for Harold Shipman and Fred West?

Something has gone wrong in this country where someone such as Moat is being raised up like this. I don’t think it has helped that the second the manhunt was over the press turned on the police forces who had done such a good job in finding him and keeping the public in and around Rothbury safe.

The national media, especially the red tops, in this country should be ashamed of the way they’ve handled the aftermath of this.

They’ve hyped and over-emphasised as much as they can to sell the maximum amount of papers running down the police forces that do excellent work every day protecting us from mentally deranged murderers like Raoul Moat.

They are the reason we have idiots like Siobhan O’Dowd setting up fan pages to murderers. Maybe the media in this country should take a long hard look at the way it conducts itself and how it reports the news.

The only good thing to come out of this whole saga for me, barring the fact he’s dead, is I’ve rediscovered The Automatics song from a few years ago ‘Raoul’.

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