A MAN accused of killing his girlfriend then terrorising shoppers in a city supermarket told a jury he was putting the gun down as police shot him.

Migrant fruit packer Tomas Uptas, 32, is alleged to have strangled Loreta Raupiene, 46, with her scarf at their home in Victoria Road on November 26 before going to Morrisons in Wincheap armed with a gun.

But when Uptas took the stand in the third week of his trial at Maidstone Crown Court he not only claimed someone else had killed the popular Canterbury Hutch Company worker but that officers gunned him down as he was trying to surrender.

In a dramatic cross-examination, Uptas pointed his bare right arm at prosecutor Oliver Saxby, exposing the scarred flesh of the police gunshot wound.

He said: "I was shot in the arm by police from the side and not from the front. I was in the process of putting the gun down when they shot me."

Although the Colt replica pistol Uptas had bought in Canterbury was converted for firing ball bearings, at close range it could still have inflicted a potentially fatal injury, it was said.

Uptas told the jury he was distraught because he believed Loreta had just left him for another man, he didn't know she was dead and he had not killed her.

He said: "At that moment I really wanted to kill myself as I had lost what I had loved, my Loreta. I hoped Loreta would come back."

He admitted putting the gun to the head of gym instructor David Bowles, a complete stranger, but said it was simply because he wanted to buy more drinks.

Mr Saxby said: "Why did you point the gun at a mother in her car with her children?"

Uptas replied: "I had just lost what I loved."

Mr Saxby said: "Yes, you killed her and you had lost your mind and you were not thinking straight."

Mr Saxby said witnesses claimed he kept the gun pointed at police. The officer had shouted, "Armed police, put the gun down," twice before shooting at his torso.

Uptas said he had answered "no comment" in police interviews because he did not want to co-operate after officers attacked him. And he added: "I have suspects in my head that I can't tell you about and if the police couldn't get to the bottom of it, I will still be able to because we have different methods but I can't tell you those methods because they are illegal.

"I don't believe in your system."

Asked if he didn't believe in the Swedish system of justice either, where he had been arrested for GBH, Uptas added: "It was in self defence and on a man, not a woman."

Uptas admits two gun offences but denies one count of murder.

The case continues.