Experts say Met needs a shoot to wound policy

The barrister who was shot dead by police at his £2.2 million Chelsea flat after a five-hour siege rarely drank and never rowed with his wife, his closest neighbour has told the Evening Standard.

The comments will serve to fuel the mystery over just what pushed Mark Saunders, 32, a respected divorce lawyer, over the edge on the day he began firing a shotgun from the windows of his home in Markham Square.

Until now, reports have suggested that Mr Saunders was an unstable alcoholic, possibly taking anti-depressants, whose short marriage to fellow divorce barrister Liz Clarke, 40, was in difficulty.

A Standard investigation also raises questions for the police over a "shoot-to-incapacitate" policy that one expert said left the barrister little chance of surviving.

One firearms expert said it was time the Met explored a new policy in armed standoffs that would allow trained snipers in certain situations to wound a gunman before capturing him. He said the Chelsea siege could have been one of those occasions.

Mr Saunders's funeral was led by Ms Clarke at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, on Friday. Some mourners and friends there were wondering why more attempts were not made to capture him alive.

Evening Standard has reconstructed events on Tuesday 6 May. We have also obtained floorplans of the couple's flat at 46 Markham Square, spread over three floors, all of which suggests he was killed at his kitchen window as he took pot-shots at police marksmen positioned in houses 50 feet away.

Fearing their lives were in danger, nine officers shot back. One source likened it to the "shoot-out at the OK Corral".

Mr Saunders was hit by at least five bullets, which caused severe damage to his brain, heart, liver and the main vein of his lower body.

We can also reveal:

Police were under orders to prevent Mr Saunders leaving the flat at all costs, fearing he would embark on a killing spree in the nearby King's Road.

He was almost certainly using standard "birdshot" shotgun pellets which reduces the threat he posed to the lives of police.

Officers, however, feared he might have possessed further weapons obtained during a stint in the Territorial Army.

Sources close to the family have been deeply upset by suggestions made about his drinking and the state of his marriage.

Alastair Laidlaw, 54, who lives in the flat below the couple, said: "They moved in last September and I never heard a cross word spoken above me. I never heard a raised voice. They were clearly devoted to each other.

"I would have known if he was a drunk. They put their rubbish out and there was never any excessive amount of bottles of alcohol. I never saw him drunk."

Mr Laidlaw, a French teacher at City of London school, said the couple would leave for work together every morning at about 6.45 and return in the evening.

He believes - but is not certain - they followed the same morning routine on the day Mr Saunders died, driving to their chambers at Queen Elizabeth Building in Temple where they were members.

A senior family lawyer stressed there was no evidence that Mr Saunders had a drinking problem. The lawyer said: "Family law is a very small world and London's top family lawyers all know who is going through a drinking problem. There were none of these rumours with regards to Mark.

"He had a very significant caseload, he was very well liked and there were no warning signs. If he was an alcoholic, solicitors would not have given him work."

Two weeks ago, Mr Saunders and his wife took part in a chambers social event. Nobody noticed anything untoward. In March, the couple had hosted a 40th birthday party for Ms Clarke - again friends detected no sign of strain in the 20-month marriage.

Ms Clarke could be key in explaining his transformation from serious barrister with earnings hovering around the £250,000 mark, to an apparently "crazed" gunman.

Some 36 hours after Mr Saunders's death, Ms Clarke telephoned her mother-in-law Rosemary, who lives in the Cheshire village of Alderley Edge , to "discuss certain matters", according to his father Rodney.

"She had a conversation with my wife but that is something very personal as I am sure you can imagine," said Mr Saunders last week, adding: "My wife is very upset. [But] She is no clearer."

Police are trying to find out why Mr Saunders returned home early? One witness to the siege said police told him that Mr Saunders had been drinking in a nearby pub for at least part of the day.

At 3.45pm - 45 minutes before the shooting began - Mr Saunders arrived at his flat, according to Jane Winkworth, who lived in the basement-flat below Mr Laidlaw's. Ms Winkworth, a shoe designer, was in her garden and heard doors slamming. At 4.30pm, she saw Mr Saunders shooting from his kitchen window into the courtyard gardens below.

Thinking he was firing at pigeons with an airgun, she asked him to stop. But Mr Saunders continued and Ms Winkworth, by now fearful for her own safety, phoned the police.

About 15 minutes later, the first armed officers arrived. They were Diplomatic Protection Group officers travelling in an armed response vehicle. The DPG has armed officers on permanent patrol in central London.

One of these officers returned fire when he was shot at by Mr Saunders, according to sources, shortly after 4.45pm.

Police from Scotland Yard's specialist CO19 firearms unit - equipped with Heckler & Koch MP5 semi-automatic carbines - were next on the scene, attempting to secure the area, positioning officers at 4 Markham Square, opposite the front entrance to No 46 and at numbers 1 and 3 Bywater Street, securing the rear of the building. They were also positioned on the roof of a shop on the King's Road. Each officer is trained to fire a single shot in response to a threat and then make a new assessment of the situation before firing again.

One source told the Standard there was huge concern Mr Saunders could "do a Michael Ryan" - referring to the gunman who ran amok in Hungerford, Berkshire, in 1987, shooting dead 16 people and wounding 15.

For the next five hours police attempted to negotiate with Mr Saunders, as he paced the three-bedroom flat - the home bought by the couple in September last year.

Spread across the top three storeys of the terrace, plans show a main living area which stretched from the front of the house to a "through" kitchen at the back. Mr Saunders mainly shot through the narrower, rear kitchen windows.

Evening Standard understands that a specialist negotiator was brought in to reason with Mr Saunders, contacting him by mobile telephone, but that talks broke down.

"Saunders was given every opportunity to surrender but continued shooting with almost inevitable consequences," said one police source.

Ms Winkworth recalls the lawyer shouting, "I can't hear you", on a number of occasions, presumably as police tried to persuade him to give himself up.

Meanwhile, his wife, whose friends include the Tory education spokesman Michael Gove, had been at work. She returned to the square in the late afternoon to discover it cordoned off.

She was later seen in tears, walking away from Markham Square, prompting mistaken early reports that they had been in the flat together and she had fled after a row.

During this time some residents - including those in the line of police fire - were led to safety while others were told to remain indoors.

Mari Morgan-Rees, 48, a musician who runs the neighbourhood watch scheme, said: "I was not told a thing by the police. I was called by my friends who told me I shouldn't leave the house and when I stepped outside the house around 5pm I was shouted at to 'get back in' by a police officer hiding behind a bush in the garden."

At 7pm, the barrister threw a box out of the rear window into the garden below on which he had scrawled in black marker pen: "I love my wife dearly xxx." Just over two hours later he was dead, suffering the fatal wounds as he fired from the rear kitchen window during exchanges of fire that lasted from from 9pm to 9.30pm.

Certain the gunman had been hit, police entered the building at 9.45pm, battering down the front door and firing CS gas and stun grenades.

They were heard shouting "get down, get down" as they entered. No further shots were fired, the Standard has established, scotching suggestions that Mr Saunders may have been killed at close-range. In fact, he was already dead or dying.

Medics dragged him onto the street and worked to keep him alive, a scene witnessed by Rebecca Blond, 45, a theatrical agent, who had sought safety in an office on the King's Road.

Ms Blond said: "They carried Mr Saunders out and put him on a stretcher on the pavement. He had no top on and had blood all over his head. Around 12 people gathered around him. A huge light on a stand was shone down on him, he had a drip attached to him and they began performing CPR.

"More doctors arrived in orange jump suits and one of the team working on him told one of the doctors that he 'had been down for 10 minutes'. He then pointed at his head and said 'he's been hit there'. They worked on him for about 15 minutes before they covered his head with a blanket."

The question is: was Saunders's death as inevitable as it seemed in the hours and days that followed?

Mike Yardley, a firearms expert who has advised the Police Federation in the past, believes that the "shoot to incapacitate" policy is too inflexible, leading almost inevitably to loss of life in situations where negotiations between a gunman and police break down.

Currently, armed officers are authorised to open fire to stop any imminent threat to life - be it their own or that of a civilian's. They are trained in first instance to aim for the torso - and if the body is not visible - then the head. The torso is the first choice because it is the easiest to hit. The problem is there is no option to merely wound a gunman by deliberately aiming for the arm or leg or hand. Mr Yardley explained: "There ought to be a wounding option as part of the training process and protocols employed."

He said that when officers open fire they "they are not shooting to kill - they are shooting to stop - but death in those circumstances is a high possibility."

Was there a chance to shoot Mr Saunders in the shoulder or arm and then storm the flat?

Family and friends will wonder if a round of rubber bullets or even the use of a Taser gun, effective up to 15 feet, could have then been used to subdue the barrister and capture him alive.

The problem is the current guidelines do not actually include "shoot to wound" as an option.

Instead, it has now emerged, officers positioned in buildings surrounding the flat appeared to open fire at once in retaliation at being shot at, aiming at Mr Saunders's body and head.

"It was like the OK Corral," said an insider, apparently questioning the need for such a massive response to a lone gunman.

A further question will be raised over the extent of the actual threat posed by Mr Saunders. True, he had military training - he had served in the Honourable Artillery Company for five to six years during and after university - while he had also been drinking on the day he died, making him more difficult to deal with.

But his shotgun, if firing only birdshot, poses a real risk to life over a distance of around 30 to 40 yards, according to experts. Family and friends will want to know exactly how much danger he posed to armed police positioned behind walls and windows.

Of course, Mr Saunders may have had other weapons and certainly police feared that.

Moreover, shotguns can also be fired using "rifled slugs", ammunition deadly over a range of 100 yards and used for such purposes as hunting wild boar. Police will not have wanted to take any risks.

Paul Robinson, a former superintendent in charge of CO19, said: "He came to the window of the property and started to fire on the people who were trying to contain him.

"You cannot withdraw these people because otherwise he would not be contained. They have to be there. In fact these officers put their lives at risk in order to prevent him from causing a risk to others."