An unarmed man was shot by police officers who mistook a table leg he was carrying for a gun, an inquest in London has been told.
Metropolitan Police officers told St Pancras Coroner's Court that they had received reports of an armed "Irishman" in the area.
One said he was in a state of disbelief when he saw the victim only had a piece of wood.
Other officers say they opened fire after painter and decorator Mr Harry Stanley pointed the tightly-wrapped blue bag containing the piece of furniture at them.
Mr Stanley, a 46-year-old father of three, died on the evening of September 22nd, 1999, as he returned to his home in Warneford Street, Hackney, after picking up the coffee table leg which one of his brothers had repaired.
Two police officers shot the man dead in the mistaken belief that the table leg he was carrying in a plastic bag was a shotgun.
Inspector Neil Sharman and PC Kevin Fagan fired twice at Harry Stanley after receiving reports of an "Irishman" leaving a pub in Hackney, east London, with a weapon in a blue plastic bag.
The caller had suggested Mr Stanley, originally from Glasgow, was Irish and that he was carrying a shotgun in a carrier bag. In fact, Mr Stanley was returning home after collecting a repaired wooden table leg, which he was carrying in the bag.
The hearing has been told that at the time of his death, he had been recovering from cancer of the colon and had difficulty walking, bending down or raising his hands after a stomach operation.
Police Sergeant Michael Meaney, told the jury: "Again I had to stare at this piece of wood. I was expecting to see a shotgun. So I ran up the road and got Inspector Sharman and PC Fagan out of the car and told them what I'd seen.
"They both appeared to be stunned and in shock by that. They said they wouldn't have done anything differently in the circumstances," he said.
PA