Bunker siege man gives up after 3 days

Published on 10/06/2004 14:45

A THREE-DAY armed stand-off between police and an obsessed military buff who holed himself up in a nuclear bunker was brought to an end today after he gave himself up.

Ronald MacDonald, 39, was captured after he walked out of the back door of the bunker where he was pounced upon by armed officers.

A spokeswoman for Fife Constabulary confirmed MacDonald had left the bunker and was now being questioned by police.

It is understood that MacDonald will be assessed by doctors today to decide whether he is mentally fit to face charges.

The drama began in the early hours of Tuesday morning, when MacDonald broke into Scotland’s Secret Bunker near Anstruther, Fife, and laid siege to the popular tourist attraction.

The bunker, a maze of tunnels and rooms 100ft under the Fife countryside once earmarked as the seat of the Scottish government in the event of a nuclear attack, was immediately surrounded by armed officers.

MacDonald, said by friends to have had a military fixation, stormed towards the bunker in a stolen JCB decked out as a tank.

Dressed in camouflage clothing and wearing an SAS-style beret, he planted a skull-and-crossbones flag outside the bunker before breaking in.

MacDonald got in through a window at the farmhouse on the site, which served as the guardroom for the 1950s bunker.

He sawed through a padlock to open metal shutters, then cut through a wire grille. Finally, he smashed the glass to get into the museum. From the guardhouse, he made his way down a 150-metre tunnel to get to the blast doors. A floating floor ensures the 1.5-tonne steel doors are kept open all the time.

But MacDonald ripped the floor up, its is thought with a crowbar, and hauled the impenetrable hermetically-sealed three-tonne blastproof doors shut behind him.

He then went on the rampage through the bunker a warren of tunnels and rooms, watched by police on CCTV.

Jim Braid, the general manager at the bunker, said: "He appeared to be enjoying playing at soldiers."

At one point he fell asleep in a suite of rooms once reserved for a secretary of state for Scotland in case of attack and alarms were activated by the police to wake the intruder up.

Cameras caught shots of him stripping army uniforms from mannequins in the museum's displays before dressing himself as a soldier.

He was spotted exploring the once secret nuclear hideaway with what was believed to be one of the decommissioned guns.

He was also seen to place barricade-style booby traps at strategic points throughout the bunker.

Friends have also told of Mr MacDonald’s obsession with collecting replica firearms after being "devastated" when he was rejected by the Army as a teenager. They said his knowledge was so advanced it was possible he was capable of reactivating weapons on display in the museum.

Police had earlier today ruled out storming the building and were willing to wait MacDonald out, despite him having enough food and drink to keep him in the bunker for weeks.

Built in 1952, it was part of an official government plan to establish a chain of early-warning radar stations along the east coast of Britain.

The structure was one of the largest ever designed and was built near key targets at Rosyth dockyard and RAF Leuchars.

Original telephone switchboards are still there, all in full working order, equipped with 2800 outside lines and 500 internal extensions.

The bunker was fitted with an air-filtering system that could cleanse the atmosphere of radioactive particles following a nuclear or biological attack.