WITNESSES have given their accounts of the events leading up to the death of a father-of-two who was killed by a police marksman.

Neighbours of Keith Richards yesterday told an inquest jury of a stand-off between police and the 47- year-old at his home in Shildon, County Durham.

Two crossbows were retrieved from the Cheapside property where Mr Richards was remonstrating with police from a back bedroom window, on the night of May 11, 2009.

Cresswell Watson, who lives adjacent to the Mr Richards’ home, said he could hear a police marksman talking in his neighbour’s garden.

Mr Watson told the jury Mr Richards, who had been accused of drink-driving, was asking police to speak with a female police officer.

Officers said they could not bring the officer, who Mr Richards claimed had ruined his life, because he had a crossbow.

“At that point I realised there was a weapon,” said Mr Watson, who went on to describe a loud bang before overhearing one marksman say “he pointed it right at me”.

Nicola Wheatley told the inquest in Newton Aycliffe that she and another neighbour had voiced concerns several weeks earlier that someone was firing what they thought was a catapult from the direction of Mr Richards’ home.

She described hearing the same noise on the night of Mr Richards’ death before she heard an officer say “one shot fired”. “Not long after there was a loud bang,” she said.

Mr Richards’ former next door neighbour, Terry Allison, described the former classroom assistant as a friendly person.

Mr Allison was read extracts from a statement he is said to have made days after the incident. In it he describes officers telling him to stay indoors “because the man next door is firing a crossbow” and telling Mr Richards to “drop the weapon”.

He told the jury he could not remember making the comments or signing the statement, and did not deal with stress terribly well.

Landlord Billy Drennan said Mr Richards had a couple of pints in the Three Tuns that evening, but was drunker than he should have been when he was asked to leave, at 10.30pm, for shouting obscenities at the television throughout the Newcastle versus Middlesbrough game.

Mr Drennan said Mr Richards thought he had won £180 by predicting the first goal. “The Newcastle fans took great delight in telling him it was an own goal, so it wouldn’t of counted,” he told the hearing.

The inquest is expected to continue for another two weeks.