AN unarmed police officer told an inquest how he feared for his life when a man who was later shot and killed by police fired a crossbow towards him – and said he also saw the man holding a gun.

PC John Lamb yesterday told an inquest jury how he and PC Karen Parker hid in silence behind a fence as Keith Richards fired two crossbow bolts that hit the other side.

The officers were first on the scene late on May 11, 2009, in Shildon, County Durham, where they learnt Mr Richards was suicidal and wanted armed officers in attendance.

PCs Lamb and Parker were responding to several 999 calls Mr Richards made making false allegations of disturbances after he was thrown out of a pub for being drunk and abusive. Initially, they tried to reason with the father- of-two, who feared a drink-driving charge would ruin his life, but were met with abuse as he leaned out of an upstairs window.

Things escalated when a neighbour came out to tell Mr Richards, who had debt worries, to go back inside.

PC Lamb told the inquest moments later he heard a couple of clicks “like someone throwing pebbles in the street”

before his partner shouted: “John, he’s got a gun.”

He said: “I have got my back to him, I hear these two clicks in the street, I see the weapon being withdrawn and then he smiles at me.”

He said Mr Richards “appeared to have a rifle”, which he described as “Wild-West”

in type.

The pair took cover behind a fence and radioed that they had been fired at, requesting an armed response vehicle.

When asked by Durham Coroner Andrew Tweddle if he thought he was fired at, as opposed to shots being fired, PC Lamb said: “I think he tried to shoot me in the back.”

PC Lamb described how Mr Richards put on a “strange accent”

and called out “bring on the armed police” before firing two crossbow bolts that “whistled overhead and clattered in the street”.

He said shortly before he heard the sirens of the armed response vehicles, Mr Richards came outside and was standing, the other side of the fence, two or three feet away.

“I was hoping that nothing would give out our position because, if he wanted to, he could have stepped out in the street and killed us both,” said PC Lamb.

“It was a huge feeling of relief to hear the cavalry arrive.”

The inquest in the Work Place, Newton Aycliffe, continues on Monday.