Rathband's unfinished business

Six months ago, PC David Rathband was left totally blind after being shot in the face by fugitive gunman Raoul Moat. Despite his horrific injuries, David is determined to return to work with Northumbria Police, where he wants to help other victims of crime. Nigel Green meets the man who reveals his fears and frustrations, as well as his hopes and dreams.

Rather than the big, burly figure you might expect for a police officer, at 5ft 8ins David Rathband is a slightly-built man.

As we meet and shake hands, he tells me how, just a moment earlier, he banged his head on the car door. He mentions this in case I notice a slight swelling above his right eye.

Compared to the agony he experienced when his life was changed forever in the early hours of Sunday, 4 July, 2010 this seems of slight concern.

At 12.45am, David was sat in his marked Volvo T5 response car, near a roundabout at the junction of the A1 and the A69 on the outskirts of Newcastle.

Less than 24 hours earlier, nightclub doorman Raoul Moat had armed himself with a shotgun and gone looking for his ex-girlfriend and her new partner. He ambushed them at a house near Gateshead.

Having been wrongly told his former girlfriend had also been having a relationship with a Northumbria police officer, Moat went looking for another target.

Simply being sat in his car in the wrong place at the wrong time, would mean that David fell victim to Moat’s misplaced desire for revenge.

As David sat there, Moat crept up alongside him, pulled out a shotgun and blasted him through the window from just 12 inches away.

David has no difficulty reliving the shooting.

“I saw the flash of the gun and turned my head. I can’t even begin to explain how painful it was. The level of noise in my head was incredible and the blood was spurting from my face. I turned my arm to shield myself and he fired again into my shoulder.”

David dropped into the well of the car and pretended to be dead.

“I actually believe I died that night. I saw a vision of my two children and they were floating past me from my left to right as I sat there and they stopped. I can remember my son and daughter speaking to me and I couldn’t speak to them, I was drifting away, and as I was drifting away my son stood up and grabbed hold of me.”

David managed to press a radio button and tell his control room: “I need urgent help. I’ve been shot.” Paramedics were on the scene within minutes as he told them: “Please don’t let me die.”

David was taken to Newcastle General Hospital just one and a half miles away, where surgeons fought to save his life. More than 12 litres – around 21 pints – of fluid had to be pumped into his body to replace the blood he was losing.

David lost one eye. It has been replaced with a prosthetic eye. He also had his jaw and shoulder badly damaged and lost seven teeth.

But he was determined to return home to his family in Blyth, Northumberland. He left hospital less than three weeks later.

Within two months, he had set up a charity to help emergency services personnel injured in the line of duty – The Blue Lamp Foundation which aims to raise £1 million.

Some of Moat’s supporters set up groups on Facebook, referring to the killer as a “legend”.

But in one of his early interviews, referring to Moat, David said: “You lost.”

I ask whether his attitude to Moat and his supporters had changed at all ? Had his views hardened or softened?”

“What do you think? What would your attitude be?” is his polite but firm reply.

I struggle for a response, as we change direction and move onto David’s planned return to work in March.

He tells me: “I want to go back to work because I don’t see why he should stop me doing what I love. But I don’t want to just feel that I’m going back to a job that’s been created for me because I’m blind. I want to make a real difference.”

Before joining Northumbria Police, David lived in Staffordshire and ran a successful plumbing business 10 years ago.

He had got his taste for police work while serving with the Special Constabulary in the West Midlands.

“It was unpaid work but I really enjoyed it.”

Having got a job with Northumbria he moved his family 200 miles North.

As well as being a 24/7 response driver, David was also a family liaison officer, having to break the news to families whose loved ones had been killed in accidents and then helping them through the trauma.

“I have been a trained family liaison officer for the last four years. It was the most demanding job I have ever done in the police but it’s also the only one I’ve done where I felt I had made a real difference.”

Among those now helping David is Colin Washington, whose wife Susan and their 17-year-old daughter Karen died in a car crash in January. David acted as the family liaison officer for the 49-year-old, from Humshaugh in Northumberland.

After hearing about the shooting, Colin contacted David to offer his support in return. He is now treasurer for the Blue Lamp Foundation.

David is still discussing with senior officers what his role will be when he goes back. I ask him if he has considered continuing as a family liaison officer.

But he says: “When you are dealing with families who have lost loved ones, I think it’s crucial to make eye contact and I just won’t be able to do that. I would feel I’d be putting too much pressure on them. But I might consider a role connected to family liaison work, such as training other officers.”

He is also considering a role visiting schools or talking at community forums.

“I would like to give talks to young people to prevent them getting involved with crime or driving cars dangerously. If I could change one person’s life, it would be great.

“I’d also like to attend public meetings and help victims of crime through the ordeals they have suffered.”

But David, who is still on painkillers, is all too conscious of his own needs for support.

He says: “My wife Kath has been my rock. There have been times when she has sat down and wept but she will then get back up and say: “We’ve got to get on with this. My children, Ashley and Mia have also shown great maturity and have coped extremely well.”

David has received thousands of cards and e-mails from ordinary people – including many of those he has helped as a family liaison officer.

He says: “I even got a letter of support from a prison inmate called Stephen. He told me he was 36 and had always hated the police but, when he read what had happened to me, he was so moved he decided to turn his life around and go straight when he gets out of prison.”

As well as using his charity to help emergency services’ personnel, David is also keen to highlight the problems all disabled people face.

He says: “My friends and family have treated me no differently. But I’m acutely aware that people with a disability such as I have are often as not treated as second class citizens.

“People need to learn to treat people on an individual basis, individual to their care needs and individual to their own personal needs and that should be done sooner rather than later.

“I’d like to see easier access to mobility training and a better standard of training in the delivery of equipment to assist blind people.

“It’s very difficult to get mobility training. There is a very long queue. There are a lot of people left in the house, waiting in the queue. There needs to be a shorter process to access guide dogs and an easier process to blend in with other agencies which try to help.

“I have an application in for a guide dog but it’s dependent on me reaching a suitable standard so that their assessors can take over from what my mobility trainer is doing. But there seems to be no national standard.”

David hopes to work from a new multi-million pound police station that recently opened in Wallsend, although he will have to rely on taxis to get him to work and will be chaperoned by a colleague.

But he says: “I’m determined to go back to work.

“What has happened will not stop me doing a job that I love. But I don’t want people thinking that they have just created a job for me. I want to do a real job that will make a difference to people’s lives.”

David hopes the latest advances in technology – such as computer software that reads e-mails and scanned documents aloud – will help him do his job.

But, before he starts his new job at Wallsend, he plans to return to his former station at Etal Lane, in Newcastle.

He says: “I still have a few demons I must face up to. On the night I was shot, I was on a 4pm to 2am shift and I never clocked off. I’m determined to return to the station and clock off. It’s just something I have to do."

• For more information on David’s charity, visit bluelamp-foundation.org