Paramedics waited for four minutes before starting to treat a man who had been tasered by police and died soon afterwards, an inquest heard yesterday.

Falmouth dad Marc Cole was handcuffed and lying on the ground whilst paramedics discussed how best to handle the incident.

It happened on May 23, 2017, after Mr Cole has taken a large amount of cocaine and suffered a psychotic episode.

Police were called when he jumped out of a first floor window and began wandering the streets with a kitchen knife.

He was then Tasered and handcuffed by police.

An expert witness at his inquest in Truro yesterday, senior South Western Ambulance Service Trust (SWAST) paramedic Michael Eric Nixon (who was not involved in the incident), said that there were safety concerns about the fact that he had possessed a blade.

But another expert witness, consultant paramedic Professor Andrew John Newton, said Mr Cole did not appear to present a threat to ambulance staff as he had been handcuffed and was lying on the ground.

Professor Newton acknowledged that it was a complex incident for the paramedics, who had first been dispatched to treat a lady with stab wounds before finding Mr Cole on arrival.

But he added that he would still expect at least one paramedic to treat the patient immediately.

Dr Jasmeet Soar, an expert on cardiac arrests, said that the use of a police Taser could have played a “more than trivial” role in Mr Cole’s death.

He also acknowledged that the amount of cocaine he had taken could have caused him to suffer a cardiac arrest even if he had not been Tasered.

He could not give a definitive answer when asked which was the more likely cause of death.

Dr Soar said: “The company that sells [Tasers] says they are non-lethal but they don’t have a ‘zero risk’. When you pass an electric current through someone to immobilise them there’s always a small risk that you could cause the heart to beat irregularly. That risk has never been quantified.

“Police use Tasers all the time. There’s quite a few deaths where Tasers are involved. Because the person’s never being monitored you can never say [with certainty] whether it was the Taser that caused cardiac arrest or what happened before.”

The jury also heard evidence from pathologists Russel Delaney and Nathaniel Carey yesterday.

They said that Mr Cole had suffered cuts to his neck that appeared to be self-inflicted. The cuts did not sever any major arteries or veins and did not cause his death. 

The inquest continues today.