A fella, Brian Low, aged 65, initially had his death called non-suspicious by the cops, but it turns out he died from terrible shotgun injuries to his neck and chest.
Brian got shot close to his home in Aberfeldy, an awful event that at first the police didn’t peg as murder. This led to an inside check-up by police overseers – and now, Low’s death paper shows he got hit fatally in the neck and the chest.
They’ve filed official docs with Perth and Kinross Council that pin down the cause of his death. The sad specifics came out after they found Low’s body on a lonely path in Pitillie, on the edge of the town in Perthsire, on Saturday, February 17.
At the beginning, they thought the death was medical and not dodgy, but four days on, the police owned up that he’d been shot dead. A post-mortem the next Friday, February 23, set off a murder investigation.
Detective Chief Inspector Martin Macdougall from Police Scotland got grilled about the six-day wait for the autopsy and how they missed a gunshot wound to begin with.
Macdougall noted that they only sussed out “criminality” on February 23, though they started getting iffy about the injury a couple days before then.
The police force also stated that the “first look-over was for a non-suspicious and medical death” but it turned out, in the end, to be murder.
The Police Investigation and Review Commissioner (PIRC) has since confirmed they’re digging into the police’s handling of the case.
A PIRC spokesperson reported: “On March 1, 2024, PIRC got the nod from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) to look into what went down with the death of a 65-year-old man found near Aberfeldy on February 17, 2024.
“When we’re done with our probe, we’ll drop a report of what we found to the COPFS.”
Before hanging up his hat about a year back, Low was a worker at Edradynate Estate and folks said he was a “much-liked and well-respected” team member. But the police have said there’s nothing to show he was mixed up in any shady business or that anyone went after him specifically.
It’s come out before now that detectives chatted with 145 people as they’re trying to track down the shooter. They pulled over 118 vehicles and chatted with 18 folks on foot near where Low met his end.
Detective Superintendent Lorna Ferguson stated: “Someone’s gotta know a thing or two. Even if you reckon what you know ain’t a big deal, we’re asking you to come forward.”
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