Readers like you keep news free for everyone.
More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to keep free access to The Journal.
For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can help keep paywalls away.
Photo: PA
Screen shots of the Raoul Moat Facebook tributes.
# Raoul Moat
Facebook tribute to Moat removed voluntarily
Page was just one of many tributes to the gunman emerging since his death.
THE CONTROVERSIAL Facebook tribute to Raoul Moat has finally been taken down after causing public outcry. The page’s creator, Siobhan O’Dowd, 21, from Burnley in England, said she regrets creating the page but still feels sorry for him.
Facebook had refused to bow to public – and political – pressure to remove the page, and Ms O’Dowd removed it voluntarily. She told the Telegraph it had just been for her and her friends, who felt sorry for him but don’t condone his actions.
Thousands of people have expressed sympathy for Mr Moat, who shot three people, killing one. Apart from the Facebook group, people have been leaving flowers at the site of his death, and his home has become something of a shrine. T-shirts bearing his image were being sold for £8 on eBay. A second Facebook tribute page is still running.
Raoul Moat shot himself after a stand-off with police who had spent seven days tracking him in the countryside outside Newcastle. An inquest into his death revealed that just before his death, police had used a Taser on Mr Moat which had not been approved by the Home Office.
