A reformed criminal has spoken for the first time about the night he thought he would be killed after he was shot by Tony Martin, following the farmer’s death this week.
Mr Martin was charged with murder following the death of 16-year-old would-be-thief Fred Barras and the wounding of 29-year-old Brendan Fearon with a shotgun.
The farmer had confronted Mr Fearon and Mr Barras after they raided his home in Emneth Hungate on the Norfolk-Cambridgeshire border on August 20, 1999.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mirror, Mr Fearon said he thought he would die that night at the hands of the then 55-year-old farmer.
He said: “I thought I was going to die but I kept thinking of my kids and I had to get to safety.”
Mr Fearon told how he fled the Norfolk farm, escaping down the road where he found an elderly neighbour who phoned an ambulance.
He said: “At the time I had no idea poor Fred (Barras) was dead. The farmer didn’t raise the alarm, he left me to my own fate. I deserved that.”
Mr Fearon, who spent a total of 14 years of his life behind bars, told the newspaper that he did not “blame” Martin for his injury, or the death of his teenage accomplice.
Now aged 54, he added: “It must have been scary for him with intruders. He’d been done so many times before, so you can’t blame him.”
His comments come after the death of Mr Martin on February 2. He served three years in prison after the shooting at his home in Emneth Hungate, Norfolk, in 1999.
He was initially found guilty of murder, but this was reduced to manslaughter on appeal.
Martin’s friend, Malcolm Starr, said that the Norfolk farmer had died in hospital after suffering a stroke in December. The case provoked a national debate about the measures homeowners can take to defend their property.
Mr Starr said Mr Martin “deserves a light up on him”, adding that he initially found him to be “very eccentric”.
He said: “I think his honesty got him incarcerated because he couldn’t lie. Because if you go in that situation, you do everything you could probably to get out of it and say, this happened and they attacked me or something like that.
“But what I’m saying is he’s really a very straight guy from that point of view.”
Mr Starr, who handled Martin’s relations with the media, added: “I still maintain, how do you know how anyone would react until you’re faced with it?
“I don’t think you can predict how you’d act if someone came into your property.”
In 2013 Mr Martin revealed he had once again confronted a burglar at the property.
He said he caught the would-be burglar while checking on an outbuilding. They drove off when confronted and Martin decided not to attempt to stop him, saying: “I couldn’t face going through all that again.”
Mr Martin said at the time: “I haven’t changed my views about what happened in 1999, but the whole experience has made me lose faith in the system and I didn’t want to be made out as the criminal again.”