Gunman Raoul Moat would have eventually surrended to police and "passed his gun over", according to one of his friends.
Tony Laidler went to Rothbury on Saturday to try to help his friend but said police made him leave without giving him the chance to speak to Moat.
He said: "I think I could have actually got him out of it because he didn't want to be shot. He was actually walking through the town so people could see him because he was actually sick of what was going on. He wanted to be caught."
Mr Laidler, who knew Moat, 37, for more than 30 years, criticised police for twice firing a Taser at the fugitive.
"I think if police didn't try and rush him with their Tasers he would have probably passed his gun over in the end anyway."
The manhunt was sparked on July 3 after Moat's former girlfriend Sam Stobbart, 22, was shot and her 29-year-old boyfriend Chris Brown killed in Gateshead. The next morning PC David Rathband, 42, was shot in an unprovoked attack at a roundabout in Newcastle.
