After nearly six hours of negotiation, Moat was shot with an experimental "wireless long-range electric shock weapon" firing electrified rounds, which proved ineffective.

Armed guards were also posted outside Rothbury schools after police announced that they believed Moat posed a threat to the wider public.

On 5 July, Northumbria Police announced that Durham Prison had told them three days earlier that Moat intended to harm his ex-girlfriend.

[19] The Ministry of Defence confirmed a Royal Air Force Tornado GR4, fitted with a RAPTOR reconnaissance pod, was deployed to do night-time sweeps with an infrared camera around the Rothbury area.

[11] Northumbria Police confirmed they had received a 49-page letter, originally given by Moat to a friend late on 3 July, warning that they were "gonna pay for what they've done".

[11][21] Sam Stobbart's half-sister reported that Moat had updated his Facebook status with a "hit list" which included her and other family members.

[26] Following an appeal for sightings of a black Lexus IS 200 SE saloon, bearing the registration V322 HKX, believed to have been used by Moat, the car was found near Rothbury.

[26] Armed officers were deployed to schools across the area and pupils were kept under temporary lockdown for fear that Moat might be close by; children were eventually allowed home.

The cordon around Rothbury was lifted at approximately 9 pm while armed patrols continued throughout the village, and vehicles were subjected to road checks whilst entering and leaving.

[30] In another press conference on the morning of 7 July,[31] the police said they believed that Moat was still at large mostly likely hiding in the surrounding countryside in the Rothbury area.

[34] Detective Chief Superintendent Neil Adamson of Northumbria Police said they considered Moat a wider threat to the public than previously thought, but would not comment further.

[36] In the early evening of 9 July, residents of Rothbury were told to stay indoors because a major security operation was taking place.

[38] With a 110-yard (100 m) cordon established on the north bank of the River Coquet, close to a rainwater culvert which runs under the village, police negotiated with the suspect, who was holding a sawn-off shotgun to his neck.

[39] Food and water were reportedly brought to Moat during the confrontation, and his best friend Tony Laidler was escorted to the scene by authorities in an attempt to persuade him to surrender.

Prosecution counsel Paul Simpson further alleged the two men had actively helped Moat look for policemen to shoot on 4 July.

[52][36] Following Moat's death, three more people were arrested on 13 July for allegedly assisting him, with three men detained at two addresses in Newcastle upon Tyne and one in Gateshead.

Research by American forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz has demonstrated that, in a country the size of the United States, such coverage "causes, on average, one more mass murder in the next two weeks".

[58] The theory that mass-media coverage prompted copycat offences because it gave killers infamy was also supported by Kate Painter, a criminology expert at the University of Cambridge.

[62] Following Moat's death, his estranged older brother Angus described the media coverage as "the whipping up to what could be a public execution in modern Britain".

What is alarming is that substantial numbers of people take this self-serving sentimental nonsense seriously, at least if the thousands of postings on the Moat Facebook tribute page, which was deleted on Thursday, were anything to go by.

Families have been collecting children from schools and nurseries throughout the day so they could watch together, as expectations reached fever pitch that a violent firearms confrontation was imminent.

[65] The original author of the spoof article, Robin Brown, commented: "Maybe it's just a sign that, in these information-saturated days, even the news is beyond satire?

"[62] The police revealed that Moat had threatened to kill a member of the public for every piece of inaccurate information published about him, and journalists were thought to be among his targets.

[67] Police also asked for articles already published about Moat's personal life to be removed from news websites, although this was said by The Guardian to be impossible due to the rolling nature and vast amount of coverage the manhunt had generated.

[62] In reference to the police request for a news blackout following the discovery of Moat's dictaphone recording, The Guardian wrote that the rolling coverage resembled "a real-life Truman Show with every development tracked around the world in blogs, on websites and mobile networking sites like Twitter".

[62] The Belfast Telegraph wrote on 8 July that "Outside interest in the case continued to grow...there are now more than 20 Facebook sites dedicated to the hunt and "Raoul Moat" was yesterday the No 1 trending topic on Twitter".

He told the House of Commons; "It is absolutely clear that Raoul Moat was a callous murderer, full stop, end of story.

[71] During the course of the manhunt, Northumbria Police had announced that they had been warned by Durham Prison in the afternoon of Friday, 2 July, that Moat intended to seriously harm his girlfriend, with the Birtley shootings occurring in the early hours of Saturday, the next day.

As a result, Temporary Chief Constable Sue Sim announced Northumbria Police would be voluntarily referring the case to the IPCC for investigation.

[73][74] It was produced by ITV Studios owned World Productions for ITV1[73][74] and written by Kevin Sampson, stars Lee Ingleby as Detective Chief Superintendent Neil Adamson, and Matt Stokoe as Raoul Moat.