Hiding in the woods... or has he slipped through the net? The last stand of the killer gunman

Police are continuing their hunt for crazed gunman Raoul Moat this morning, who is thought to be holed up in woodland armed with two shotguns and enough ammunition to slaughter dozens of officers.

The deranged former bouncer, who has vowed to keep killing officers until he dies, was believed to be lying in wait in a secret hideout.

But there are growing fears today that he may have slipped through the net after dumping a car that he had been using to try to throw police off the scent.

Last night armed police surrounded a stone cottage three miles outside Rothbury after a young family returned home to find their garden shed had been broken into. 

Alarmed and frightened, the couple and their two young children drove to friend Robert Storer's home nearby after making the discovery around 10pm. Mr Storer, a kitchen and bathroom retailer, then accompanied the father back to the cottage to carry out a proper check. They found the downstairs doors secured and the property seemingly undisturbed. 

But when the family returned to the house together 30 minutes later, a patio door leading from the master bedroom to a balcony had been opened, when it had previously been closed, and curtains which had been left open were now closed.

Police spent 70 minutes outside the home with guns trained on the three-bedroom property. An officer could be heard 

shouting: 'Armed police - show yourself now' and heat-seeking equipment appeared to have been trained on the walls to detect possible life sources inside before officers eventually moved in. 

The convoy of three armed response vehicles and a police riot van left the scene a short time later after ruling the alert was a false alarm.

Mr Storer told the Daily Mail officers had initially classified the call over the shed break-in as 'silver', or medium priority, and had not attended the scene until he called for a second time after the family discovered the bedroom patio door had been opened.

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