Police searching the graveyard of SS Mary & John Church in March Police officers battled in vain to save a man's life after he stopped breathing during a struggle in a graveyard.

Paul Lewis, 42, died after officers tried to restrain him at St Mary & John Church in Cowley, Oxford, on March 14,an inquest at Oxford Coroner's Court heard yesterday.

Pc Sandra Timms told the inquest she was cycling through the graveyard at 1pm when she saw Mr Lewis talking to himself.

She asked if he was feeling okay and seconds later Mr Lewis, a diagnosed schizophrenic, began punching her on the head.

Colleague Pc Rupert Jones raced to her aid and wrestled with Mr Lewis, then kneed him several times to the left upper thigh. Pc Timms hit him in the same area with her baton.

After a struggle, Pc Jones dragged Mr Lewis to the ground and both officers knelt on top of him and strapped on handcuffs.

But less than a minute later he had stopped breathing and turned purple.

An inquiry into the death was launched by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Pc Timms said: "There were several blows, I initially thought it was five or six, but it may have been more than that. He was raining both hands on my head with both fists.

"I was extremely dazed and unsteady on my feet."

Pc Jones told the inquest he grabbed Lewis by the arms, tried a judo trip and kneed him in the thigh with "distraction blows".

He managed to pull him to the ground and laid on his back, punching him twice in the shoulder, and handcuffed him.

Pc Jones said: "We had been on the ground for about 30 or 40 seconds and Sandra said to me he doesn't look right'. I looked back at him and he was purple in the face and his tongue was drooping out of his mouth.

"I twisted his fingers to see if I got a response but he didn't look like he was with it. I knew straight away something was wrong.

"At that point he wasn't breathing."

Mr Lewis, of New Malden in Surrey, was turned over and the handcuffs were taken off.

Two more police officers arrived on the scene and Pc Jones attempted to resuscitate Mr Lewis for 10 minutes.

Paramedics declared Mr Lewis dead at the scene.

Video footage of police attempts to revive the man, shot by passer-by Neil Wolfson, a student at Mansfield College, was shown to the inquest.

Mr Lewis's father Aneurin Lewis, of Surbiton in Surrey, told the inquest his son was a diagnosed schizophrenic and vowed never to return to a psychiatric hospital after he was discharged in September 2005 - the fifth time he had been sectioned under mental health legislation since 1984.

His father said: "He was quite aggressive in terms of what happened to him in hospital and changed his attitude towards police, who had always taken him to hospital."

The inquest was told Mr Lewis had been staying at the Oxford Hotel in Godstow Road from March 11, but no explanation was given for his visit to the city.

The inquest continues today.