The killing of Mark Saunders

This police shooting is a disgrace and an outrage, argues a former high-ranking soldier with 20 years' experience incounter-terrorism at home and abroad. He is writing on condition of anonymity.

Four months ago, Mark Saunders, a successful and highly regarded London barrister, came back early from work to his flat in salubrious Markham Square, Chelsea, and started drinking. Having consumed a good deal, evidently, he reached for his shotgun and started firing, mostly from one window, to the alarm and consternation of his neighbours. According to one: "He didn't even bother to open the window – he was shooting through the glass. There are bullet holes in my daughter's bedroom wall. People were screaming: 'What on earth are you doing?'."

The police were called. They evacuated the nearby buildings and surrounded Saunders's flat. A siege followed, with Saunders apparently heedless of police requests, unwilling to negotiate and reportedly still firing the occasional shot.

He wrote a note expressing love for his wife, with whom, according to some accounts, he had argued that morning. After five hours, the police fired about 10 shots (hitting his brain, heart, liver and the main vein of his lower body, according to the coroner), followed by stun grenades. They entered the flat and, without further gunshot, found Saunders badly injured. He died outside soon afterwards.

Last week the High Court heard a variety of arguments about the case. The police position is that they had no choice but to shoot Saunders. One police source was quoted as saying that nine officers discharged their weapons, "an indication of how great the perceived threat was". A police source also said: "Firearms officers are incredibly professional and work to the same drill every time – they must be able to justify each occasion they pull the trigger."

But Saunders's family are not satisfied. They say he posed no risk to the public, that CCTV footage shows that at the moment he was shot he was holding the gun limply in his left, ie weaker, hand, that he had not fired his gun for 20 minutes when the police opened fire and that he had been talking to the police only 10 seconds before he was shot.

Last week the family claimed in the High Court that the police officers should not be allowed to compare notes before giving evidence. We await the judge's view on that long-established practice.

You may say that an unstable man who fires a shotgun in a quiet urban street deserves everything that is coming to him.

Admittedly, this was no innocent-mistaken-for-a-terrorist, but I know whose side I am on. It is a disgrace, an outrage, that Saunders died that day, and in my view somebody should go to prison for it.

Britain does not endorse premeditated use of lethal force in situations other than war. The only arguable exception is Operation Kratos – the use of lethal force to neutralise suspected suicide bombers, which was in force when Jean Charles de Menezes was killed... More