When faced with a drunk or high person in the front lobby of the Chilkoot Trails Inn, night clerk Josephine Smith would usually deal with it on her own.

But when she saw Grant McLeod stumbling around the lobby on the morning of Aug. 30, 2008 with what looked to be a needle in his hand, she immediately locked herself in the office and called Whitehorse RCMP.

"I was totally scared,” she said. "(The hotel's owner) had told me not to confront him if he came in – to just call the police.”

McLeod looked "totally drugged, out of it, eyes bulging and swaying,” she told police in an interview after the incident.

Smith's taped statement was played to a six-person coroner's jury Monday afternoon, during the first day of a public inquiry into McLeod's death.

The 39-year-old Whitehorse man died after being pinned down and handcuffed by police on the second floor of the downtown motel. A coroner's report labelled the cause of death as a cocaine overdose.

The inquest is being held because McLeod died in police custody.

Lawrence Dobish has lived and worked at the Chilkoot for 13 years and is used to the occasional ruckus in the hallways. At about 7 a.m. that Saturday, he awoke to the sound of a woman's voice saying, "Don't do that, stop it!”

At the same time the man two doors down from Dobish peeked into the hallway to see what was going on.

He saw two RCMP officers on the floor, trying to restrain someone. He heard a woman screaming, then closed his door.

The woman who was living across the hall heard the female officer too.

"I heard her shout, ‘Would you quit resisting this arrest!'

"... I was thinking ‘God, if she's by herself, she must be having a hard time.'”

The officer was not by herself, the jury heard today, but she was having a hard time.

Const. Tara Taylor and Const. Jason MacDonald were the first to respond to Smith's 911 call, according to watch commander Cpl. Robert MacDougall, who was just starting his 7 a.m. shift as the constables headed to the Chilkoot.

Minutes later, he heard MacDonald make a "routine request” for assistance over the radio. As he headed to his cruiser, MacDougall heard a second call – a 10-33.

"It's the highest level request a person can make for backup,” he explained. In 16 years of service, he said, he has only ever heard one other 10-33.

An officer from the traffic division, Vincent Gagnon, also heard the first request, then the urgent call for help.

"The second time, the voice sounded panicked,” he recalled, adding that MacDonald, who made the call, was normally calm and composed.

Both officers headed for the Chilkoot and arrived within moments of each other.

As they rounded the corner on the second floor landing, they could hear Taylor shouting, "Stop resisting!” and saw her lying over McLeod's upper torso.

MacDonald was lying on the man's legs. McLeod was lying face-down.

"I was under the impression they were in a struggle and they were losing,” MacDougall told the jurors. When asked if he saw McLeod moving, he said he did not.

Gagnon said he grabbed McLeod's left arm, and MacDougall remembered grabbing his right. Both said McLeod was resisting. and they struggled to get handcuffs on him.

Gagnon said he left the scene immediately once the cuffs were on because he was not in uniform and didn't have his service belt with him.

McLeod was no longer moving at this point, MacDougall said, but he was visibly breathing as the officers took off his one remaining shoe and pants "because it is easier to search a pair of pants than do a pat down.”

When they rolled McLeod over, MacDougall said he noticed a purplish tinge to his face and his pupils were fixed and dilated.

MacDougall said one of the other officers to checked for and found McLeod's pulse.

"He was breathing; I could see his chest rising and falling,” MacDougall said.

The commander ordered the officers to move McLeod to the other end of the hallway, where there was more room to check him for needles or weapons.

When they picked him up. "I noticed he was quite limp,” MacDougall said.

When they got to the end of the hall, the officers radioed for an ambulance and put McLeod on his side with his knee to his chest to keep his airway open.

"... After several minutes, I noticed an extremely loud exhalation of breath,” MacDougall said. An officer felt for a pulse and found none.

Another call went out to the paramedics, who said they were moments away.

At this point, the officers removed the handcuffs, MacDougall said, carried McLeod's body down to the lobby and had just begun to perform CPR when the paramedics arrived to take over.

McLeod was pronounced dead at the hospital, approximately one hour after police first received the 911 call.

The inquest into his death is scheduled to continue for the rest of the week.