This was all very civilised considering the potential danger of the situation.

We got the call that there had been an incident involving a firearm and armed police were on the scene.

It turned out that a man had been shot by a man using a shotgun and armed police surrounded a house in Murton where the assailant was holed up.

Murton is a former pit village in County Durham and when I arrived at the scene I knocked at a neighbouring house to ask if it was okay to observe what was going on from the back of their property.

It turned out that the householders were more than pleased to let me sit on their back step and they even kept me well supplied with cups of tea and even some biscuits. As you can imagine the presence of an armed response unit had attracted a crowd.

It was the perfect vantage point to watch events as they unfolded and these are the resulting shots from that day.

I was probably using either a 300mm f2.8 or a 400mm f2.8 lens with a monopod to keep it steady.

I decided to obscure the faces of the man and the woman who emerged from the house as it is now more than 20 years since this took place and it seemed only right to protect their identities.

Man arrested after street shooting