The barrister killed after a five-hour siege was shot at least five times by police marksmen positioned outside the building, The Times has been told.

Officers shot at Mark Saunders as he fired his shotgun out of the window of his house in Markham Square, Chelsea, West London, after he was deemed to be a threat to life. At least five of the bullets, possibly six, found their mark, The Times has learnt.

During intense negotiations, Mr Saunders’s mood was said to have been “up and down” and it is believed that at one point negotiators thought he might give himself up.

But at 9.30pm he began firing a shotgun for the third time from a window and was shot. By the time officers entered the three-storey, £2.28 million property on Tuesday evening after apparently throwing in stun grenades, Mr Saunders was dead. None of the officers who stormed the house discharged weapons once inside. Investigators have confirmed a legally registered shotgun was recovered by police.

Some of the first armed officers on the scene were from the Diplomatic Protection Group and initially they returned fire as armed officers from Scotland Yard’s CO19 firearms unit arrived.

Mr Saunders’s father has demanded answers over why his son was shot, and insisted that he had not put anyone in danger.

Rodney Saunders claimed yesterday that his son, a former trooper in the Honourable Artillery Company, was not a lethal threat.

He said: “Put it this way. He didn’t endanger anyone at all to my knowledge and we can only surmise what might have happened before the whole thing started.

“I just don’t know. You would imagine that it will come out in the fullness of time. We will want answers as to why police shot him.”

Mr Saunders, 32, and his wife, Elizabeth Clarke, 40, were both highly-paid family lawyers working from the Queen Elizabeth Building chambers in the Temple. They had been married for two years but had become estranged.

It is said that his behaviour had become increasingly drunken and erratic. Ms Clarke said last night, in a statement released on her behalf through her chambers, that the couple had a “strong union” and had been “deeply committed to each other”.

She also denied having been at the Chelsea home in the hours before Mr Saunders’s shooting spree and said that she had arrived back after the area had been cordoned off.

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