A GUNMAN was ordered to be locked away for the rest of his life in a secure mental hospital after a shooting spree which left one person dead and 14 injured.

Robert Sartin has already been in secure custody for more than seven years since the day he strolled around a residential area of Monkseaton, Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, casually shooting almost everyone he confronted.

He used his father's legally held shotgun.

He said he had been told to carry out the shootings by the voice of a killer in a horror video he had hired.

BT manager Ken Mackintosh, 41, was walking home after attending the Sunday service at a Methodist church when he was killed with two double-barrelled bursts, the second at close range.

Sixteen other men and women were targeted during Sartin's 20-minute spree. He sprayed shot at walkers, motorists, a cyclist, and people working in gardens or looking from windows.

Fourteen were hit and two were particularly seriously injured. At least one of them, Mr Robert Wilson, still has many of the 60 pellets which hit him embedded in his body.

It was April 30, 1989, when the civil servant with no history of violence suddenly appeared to crack up. After the outrage, he meekly gave himself up to an unarmed policeman.

His mental condition was rated so bad he was judged unfit to plead when he came before Newcastle Crown Court, and he received treatment at Merseyside's Ashworth Hospital.

Yesterday, Durham Crown Court was told he was now able to have the charges put to him. The count of murder and 16 of attempted murder were read out to him and to each he replied: ``Not guilty by virtue of insanity.''

Mr Justice Kennedy ordered that Sartin should spend the rest of his life in a secure hospital, explaining: ``You will not be released because I make an order that you should be detained without limit of time.''

The judge commented: ``There is no question that this tragedy came about because you were, as you remain, a gravely ill man.''

Sartin, now 29, the son of a former Swan Hunter shipyard weapons expert, showed no emotion in the dock but due to his condition was taken down to the cells while prosecutor David Robson QC briefly outlined the case.

A personally written message from Sartin, explaining his actions and expressing sorrow for them, was read to the court by Mr James Chadwin QC, defending.

It said: ``Apologising for the terrible offences I carried out . . . will not help the family of the innocent man I killed or ease the memories of all the people I hurt.

``What I want my victims and the family of Mr Mackintosh to know is that their awful pain was not the result of a planned or intended crime and there was no pleasure involved.

``It was completely the product of a mental illness so severe that reality was taken over by insanity.

``All I want to say to everyone involved in this tragedy, the people on the legal side, the police, my family and all whose lives I affected, is I am so very sorry.''

Dr Marion Swan, a psychiatrist, later told a news conference that Sartin suffered from a ``major psychotic illness'' which was a ``rare, extremely acute and severe'' form of schizophrenia.

He told police after his arrest that he had been directed to carry out the shootings by the voice of Michael, a homicidal maniac in the horror film Hallowe'en. He had hired a video of the film the day before the shootings.

Dr Swan said hearing voices was ``one of the symptoms of acute schizophrenia'' for which there was no cure.

A statement from Miss Debbie Mackintosh, the daughter of the man Sartin killed, which was read at a news conference, said her father ``loved his family more than anything in the world.

``That love has kept us sane throughout this seven years of hell and that love will keep us strong throughout our future,'' it added.

Detective Chief Inspector Keith Atkinson, who broke the news of Mr Mackintosh's death to the family and has kept in touch with them over the years, spoke of acts of bravery that day.

He referred particularly to elderly Vera Burrows who on hearing shots stepped out of her home to be confronted by the gunman but stood up to him, demanding: ``What the hell is going on?''

Sartin replied: ``It is me. I am killing people. I am going to kill you.''

Then, after pointing the gun at her, he changed his mind, commenting: ``You are too old to die, I am not going to kill you.''

He then strolled away.