A 92-year-old man was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound shortly after a fire was started at his son’s house.
Andrew Allan was being treated in a high dependency ward at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness last night after an early morning incident at a property in the Highlands.
Police put a double cordon in place around the home of his son, also called Andrew, yesterday.
Mr Allan sen lives in a caravan just 500 yards from the property.
It is believed the pair had been involved in a long-running family dispute.
Firefighters were called to reports of a blaze at Mr Allan jun’s home near the Ross-shire village of Garve in the early hours of yesterday but it was out by the time crews arrived.
But a major police investigation was launched after his dad was found wounded nearby. It is understood a handgun was also discovered at the scene.
Mr Allan sen is believed to have been at the centre of an incident on the A9 last year which led to police being criticised for the way they handled it.
Armed officers in three cars swooped on the pensioner’s vehicle in November after a man called 999 to report he had been told someone was travelling to his home to kill him.
He was held for almost six hours before being released without charge.
The Police Investigations and Review Commissioner Professor John McNeill found officers did not have reasonable grounds to detain him as a suspect for making criminal threats, having “failed to complete their inquiries or obtain any additional information or evidence”.
Prof McNeill found that firearms officers were not at fault.
Yesterday two police cars prevented vehicles and pedestrians entering a narrow lane leading to the scene of yesterday’s drama.
An officer said: “There are ongoing inquiries involving several officers which are expected to take several hours.”
Around noon, CID officers arrived with a forensics van and an unmarked police vehicle was waved through the cordon 30 minutes later.
In a statement released later police said: “At about 3:23am this morning police received a report of a disturbance at a dwelling in the Garve area.
“An elderly man was taken to Raigmore Hospital with serious, but not believed to be life-threatening, injuries. Inquiries are ongoing and no further details are available at this time.”
One local resident, who asked not to be named, said: “The father was seen driving erratically in the village on Thursday with the front of his car missing, including the number plate.
“This is very sad to hear, although the son has not had much luck recently – he broke his back in a fall while building a new house and then suffered from shingles for some time.
“There has been a long-running dispute going as far back as the Chernobyl disaster in the 1980s which affected the farming industry here after there was nuclear fallout in the area.
“The Allans had a deer farm and had big plans to expand it, but Chernobyl killed it because it had affected livestock.”
It is understood land was divided up between members of the family after the business difficulties, and that led to an ongoing dispute between Mr Allan and his son.
A spokesman for NHS Highland last night said: “Mr Allan is in a stable condition.”
Meanwhile, a Highland councillor who recently spoke out against routine arming of police officers in the north said yesterday morning’s events had not changed his views.
David Alston added: “There are times when there has to be an armed response – no one disputes that.
“But nobody believes that police should be armed at all times, especially when attending an incident where there is no need for them to be carrying weapons.
“Yesterday’s incident has no relevance to the debate over whether they should be armed or not.”
Police said in a statement late last night that a 92-year-old man had “been arrested in connection with a disturbance at Garve in the early hours of Friday, July 25”.
It added: “A report has been submitted to the procurator fiscal.”