Inquiry into police shooting of OAP
Independent police investigators are conducting inquiries after a man was shot dead by police in a quiet country village.
The man, named locally as Mervyn Tussler, was fatally shot on Friday afternoon in the village of Fernhurst, near Midhurst, in West Sussex.
Armed response vehicles and police dog handlers had raced to the area after a woman reported seeing a man with a gun in Ash Grove.
According to neighbours, police surrounded a block of retirement flats run by Hanover Property Management in the street where Mr Tussler lived.
Reports said Mr Tussler became a "lost soul" after being told his wife Winifred, who is said to be in hospital with a urinary tract infection, would have to live in a care home.
Earlier reports that Mr Tussler, aged in his 60s, had been holding his wife hostage are untrue, according to a spokeswoman for the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
She said: "At this stage it is believed that no member of the public, other than the deceased, was in the house at the time of the incident."
One eyewitness said officers used a loud hailer to encourage him to leave the flat before the fatal shot was fired.
Another said she heard a policewoman shout "We have stunned him, get an ambulance" during the confrontation.
A drinker at the Duke of Cumberland pub in the village said police had been called to a hostage situation. The man, who declined to be named, said: "I was told there was a hostage situation and it was an elderly man with an ill wife. Apparently he was armed and would not let anyone come near."
