Retired osteopath 'disarmed gunman after he shot him and his wife'

A retired osteopath managed to disarm a gunman after he shot him and his wife at their family home, a court heard yesterday.

John MacKenzie, 65, said he was shot in the back at point blank range as he tried to protect his wife, before getting up and tackling Finlay MacDonald at his home in the Highlands.

MacDonald had allegedly shot and injured MacKenzie’s wife through a window just minutes earlier.

Mr MacKenzie told the High Court in Edinburgh that he had lain over his wife to protect her and told her: ‘He will shoot me in the back once and I will take the gun off him.’

Mrs MacKenzie said her husband then ‘rose up’ and took the gun off MacDonald. Mrs MacKenzie then repeatedly hit MacDonald over the head with a metal toilet roll holder.

MacDonald, 41, is on trial accused of murdering his brother-in-law, John MacKinnon, and the attempted murder of three other people, including his wife on August 10 2022, all of which he denies.

It is alleged that he repeatedly discharged a shotgun at Mr MacKinnon and murdered him in the village of Teangue on Skye that day.

He is also accused of firing a shotgun at Mr and Mrs MacKenzie and attempting to murder them in the village of Dornie, Wester Ross, on the same day.

He also denies attempting to murder his wife, Rowena, by repeatedly stabbing her in the village of Tarskavaig, on Skye’s Sleat peninsula that day.

Mr MacKenzie told the court he was returning from feeding pigs at their croft when he heard someone shouting: ‘Drop the weapon. Drop the weapon’ as he approached the house. 

He said: ‘I knew there was something wrong when I heard that.’

He said he saw a man who he recognised as MacDonald standing at a front window with a single barrelled shotgun. 

He said: ‘Straight away I knew this was a bad situation. I just knew it was bad.’

He went inside to find his wife with her face covered in blood and with a towel around her head.

He said: ‘I didn’t realise he had shot twice through the window. I didn’t hear any shots.’

Mr MacKenzie said his wife was ‘quite distressed’ and said they needed to go into the bathroom and lock the door.

He said: ‘I said “don’t worry. he will shoot me in the back once and I will take the gun off him”.’

Mr MacKenzie said he put his wife to the floor, adding: ‘I lay on top of her to protect her and then he shot me in the back. The struggle for the gun occurred after that. I got up, took the gun off him.’

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He said: ‘When I got up to tackle him Fay would have been on the floor in the shower. My thought was if I had the gun underneath he couldn’t get it.’

He then heard calls of ‘shots fired, shots fired’ before police used a Taser.

Mr MacKenzie said as soon as he saw the gun he deduced the gunman had one shot and then he could disarm him.

Advocate depute Liam Ewing KC told him it would be agreed in the case that the gun was a pump action shotgun and Mr MacKenzie agreed his view of the weapon at the time of the incident was mistaken.

He told the court that he lost a kidney in the shooting incident as well as sustaining other injuries.

Mr MacKenzie said he was an osteopath for 40 years before retiring in April 2022. MacDonald had earlier contacted him complaining of chest pain and respiratory problems and had been off work for a year.

He said that after having two treatment sessions MacDonald claimed his back was uncomfortable.

Defence counsel Donald Findlay KC said jurors would hear that MacDonald became ‘fixated’ with Mr MacKenzie over damage he believed was caused by treatment given to him.

Mr MacKenzie’s wife Fay, 65, said that on the morning of the shooting she was at the patio of their home before she heard shouting and saw a man with a gun. 

She said police were there and she was told to get back into the house and lock the door. She went back inside before she was shot in the face.

She said she fled to the bathroom, the only room in the house with a lock on the door, and put a towel on her head to staunch the blood, before her husband arrived.

She said MacDonald shot her husband at ‘point blank range’, adding: ‘He was standing there, the man, and I thought, this is it, this is us going to be killed but then my husband rose up and took the gun off the man.

‘I could not see how he did it but he ran out, he must have pulled it off him.’

Mrs MacKenzie said she then grabbed a ‘hefty’ metal toilet roll holder and used it to hit the man on the head a couple of times, then stopped when she heard a voice say ‘that will do’ and realised that police were there.

The court heard that her husband was flown to hospital by air ambulance while she was treated at Broadford Hospital in Skye and still has pellets in her face and scalp which she said can feel tender.

MacDonald has lodged a special defence against the murder charge, claiming his ‘ability to determine or control his conduct was substantially impaired by reason of abnormality of mind’, and a judge said he could be convicted of an alternative charge of culpable homicide if the jury believed his defence of diminished responsibility.

The trial continues before Judge Lady Drummond.