Arrested: The grandfather who ‘attacked’ an RAF Apache with an £8 torch
By
Mail On Sunday Reporter
Last updated at 1:20 AM on 18th October 2009
Questioned: Torben Merriott investigated the noise using a cheap torch
A lighting expert who has worked for the Queen has been arrested for shining an £8.45 torch at an RAF Apache helicopter gunship outside his home in the early hours.
Torben Merriott, 63, was woken by what felt and sounded like an ‘earthquake’ outside his bedroom window at 1am.
The grandfather used the torch to identify the aircraft.
He spotted one of two gunships on an exercise just ‘10ft above my garden’ at his farmhouse in Stradbroke near Eye, Suffolk, and called the Ministry of Defence complaint line.
But instead of receiving an apology for the September 18 disturbance, Mr Merriott was visited three weeks later by police, who arrested him on suspicion of endangering an aircraft by dazzling the pilot.
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