Police To Sell Raoul Moat’s Suicide Shotgun on Gumtree

After a satisfying evening of overtime which ended in time for a respectable night’s kip, the police announced plans to sell the shotgun which Raoul Moat used to end his life “just as soon as forensics have wiped the brains off it.”

The fugitive gunman was cornered at 8pm yesterday by a riverbank and swiftly surrounded by calm and highly professional police marksmen (see photo). Expert negotiators were swiftly called, with representatives from the national newspapers vying to get an exclusive interview and outbid their rivals for serialisation rights to Moat’s autobiography.

Events were to take a dramatic turn later, however, when professional Northern idiot Paul Gascoigne arrived with some lager and a chicken for the desperate murderer. However, despite impassioned requests from senior police officers, the former England player declined to cross the cordon and become Moat’s hostage, and eventually wandered off to have a picnic with himself.

The stand-off finally reached its inevitable conclusion when Raoul Moat – already said to be severely upset at having his limelight stolen by the role model for Viz cartoon characters Terry Fuckwit and 8-Ace - finally heeded the advice of the police, and shot himself to save them from having to answer any awkward questions about unreasonable force.

“Twenty past one. Ideal,” said Det Chief Supt Neil Adamson, the officer in charge of the manhunt. “Let’s get him into a blood-wagon, and we can all be home in bed by two. Tell you what, just put ‘all night’ on your overtime sheets and I’ll sign them off tomorrow.”

“Can somebody make sure we’ve got the top of his head?” he added. “We don’t want some News of the World hack picking it up and splashing it all over the front page on Sunday morning. I want it for my book.”

Earlier in the day there were fears that the usual route for weapons confiscated by the police into the hands of criminals had been compromised, as two firearms licensing officers were let off with suspended sentences after resigning from Durham Police. However, enterprising officers have now decided to offer their vast stocks to the north-east’s criminal fraternity through community recycling website Gumtree.

“When you consider the man-hours and raw materials that a revolver, shotgun or MAC-11 represents, it does seem such a terrible waste to chuck them all in a crusher,” commented a leading underworld hitman.

Meanwhile, serious questions are already being asked by the tabloid media about how the police could possibly have allowed the stand-off to go on past the printing deadline for their Saturday editions.