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IN every sense, Mark Saunders died a chaotic death. Drunk and staggering around his flat with a bottle of red wine in one hand and a shotgun in the other, he fired at random from the window while the Doors song The End blared from his stereo.
In a series of rambling conversations and handwritten notes, he spoke of being "resigned" to dying, suggesting that he was trying to commit "suicide by cop".
But his widow and family have always maintained that his death was not inevitable, and he might have lived had it not been for equally chaotic behaviour among the policemen in charge of the array of firepower trained on the 32-year-old barrister.
A breakdown in communications between senior officers meant that the 59 marksmen on the scene had no knowledge of his exchanges with trained negotiators.
The situation on the ground was so confused - as Scotland Yard has admitted - that commanders had conflicting opinions of who was in charge. And with the noise of a police helicopter hovering overhead, Saunders could not communicate with officers trying to persuade him to put down his gun. His final words were: "Hang on, I can't hear."
Seconds later, he was hit by seven bullets, which an inquest jury has now decided were fired lawfully in "reasonable self-defence".
However, the jury also heaped criticism on the police for their "lack of clarity" over who was in charge and a failure to give enough consideration to the fact that Saunders was a vulnerable alcoholic.
What is likely to haunt his widow, Elizabeth, most of all is her belief that she could have saved her husband if the police had let her talk to him rather than ordering her to turn off her mobile phone.
Incongruous as it may seem, Saunders should have been spending the evening of May 6 2008 having dinner with Chris Tarrant. The television presenter had invited the barrister and his colleagues as a "thank-you" for handling his Pounds 25million divorce.
Instead, for reasons that might never...