AN EYE witness said he could see no reason why a police officer used pepper spray against a grandfather who died in custody a short time later, an inquest heard today (October 18).

Neighbours gave evidence that Lenny McCourt was showing no signs of any physical threat when an officer sprayed him in the face, a jury sitting in Crook was told.

The 44-year-old went down grasping his eyes, but was given a second blast of the spray, before he was handcuffed and put into a police van, they said.

Mr McCourt was taken from his house in Ash Crescent, Seaham, to the nearby Peterlee police station, in County Durham, on September 11, 2010, where he was certified dead after the seven-mile drive.

Police were alerted when a neighbour dialled 999 to report Mr McCourt shouting drunkenly in the street.

Two male officers and a female officer, who attended the scene in a patrol car and van, went into his house to speak to him.

They were about to leave, the problem apparently solved, when Mr McCourt went up to window of the patrol car and spoke to the female officer in the passenger seat.

John Graham, 19, said the male officer driving the car - known as officer A - got out and sprayed Mr McCourt in the face.

Mr Graham said: “I didn’t see any reason for him to do it.

“He staggered towards his van covering his eyes and trying to clean them. That is when the officer ran around to the front of him and sprayed him again.”

A 17-year-old girl who saw the incident, said Mr McCourt had banged on the patrol car’s window and demanded the female officer get out.

She added, Officer A took his spray and “hid it behind his leg and as he was getting closer to the man he sprayed it”.

Asked by coroner Andrew Tweddle if she was surprised he used the spray, she said she would have done the same as Mr McCourt was “scary”.

Mr McCourt emerged from his garden handcuffed and he was taken away with officers holding him up by his arms.

He was put into the back of the van head first and his dangling legs put in after him, the jury heard.

An earlier hearing was told Mr McCourt had suffered heart failure “precipitated by the sequence of events” on the day.

The hearing continues