Clacton shooting: police find gunman's body in churchyard Clacton shooting witness describes the scene where Ian Dibell was shot Link to this video The hunt for the gunman who murdered an off-duty police officer and wounded another man came to an end early on Tuesday morning when police found the suspect's body in an Essex churchyard. Officers discovered the body of Peter Reeve, 64, following a phone call from a member of the public just after 8.30am. Reeve is understood to have shot himself. His body was found, along with a handgun, in the grounds of a church in the village of Writtle, near Chelmsford. At a press conference, Jim Barker-McCardle, the chief constable of Essex police, said: "I can confirm Peter Reeve, the man wanted for the murder of a serving police officer, was found dead, with a weapon in a Writtle churchyard and no shots were fired by the police." PC Ian Dibell, 41, was killed and a member of the public, named locally as Trevor Marshall, 48, wounded in the leg after a gunman opened fire during a dispute in a residential street in the seaside town of Clacton in Essex on Monday. Dibell, who lived near the Redbridge Road crime scene, is understood to have intervened in the dispute. The chief constable said Writtle churchyard may well have held significance for Reeve, who, he stressed, remained the only suspect in what he termed "a terrible sequence of events." The body was found on the western edge of the churchyard among a number of graves. A tent was erected inside and forensic officers continued to examine the scene on Tuesday afternoon. Police officers were understood to be at a number of properties in the village belonging to members of Reeve's family. The media were asked not to approach them as they were said to be distressed, and could be possible witnesses. But in any case, they added, he would not have been entitled to possess a handgun as such weapons are subject to stringent legal controls. "Whatever may or may not turn out to have sat behind the motive, yesterday can only be described as impossible to understand and a catastrophic escalation in events," he said. It is an extreme set of circumstances that a man opens fire with a gun clearly firing at more than one person and shooting an off-duty police constable dead. There must have been some sort of catalyst that prompted the scale of a tragedy of this kind. Detectives stressed the incident was still being treated as a "live murder inquiry" and urged witnesses to come forward. Dibell's family called him a "hero" and said he had paid for his actions "in the most devastating way." It was who he was: a hero. Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, was among the many senior officers who paid tribute to Dibell's bravery. Mark Smith, the chairman of the Essex Police Federation, added: "Constable Ian Dibell was a dedicated professional officer who, even though off duty, has paid the ultimate sacrifice for his bravery and selfless actions in trying to protect his local community."