The girlfriend of James Ashley has told of the moment she watched him die after he was shot by a Sussex Police officer.

Mr Ashley, 39, was shot in the chest from close range in his bedroom by a police marksman in front of his girlfriend, Caroline Courtland-Smith.

She said: "Jimmy looked up to me, looked me directly in the eye with his last dying breath and it was like a screech - a squeal like a child.

"They put Jimmy into the recovery position and, to the right, the whole end of the bed was just soaked in his blood, which was almost black.

"The whole mattress was sodden with blood and to the left of him, against the white wall, was his blood all over the wall - more blood than I've ever seen before."

Mr Ashley was shot dead on January 15, 1998, during an early-morning police raid on his flat in Western Road, St Leonards.

Firearms officers had been briefed that there was a large haul of drugs in the flat and the occupants could be armed and dangerous.

Mr Ashley was a suspected drug dealer and had a conviction for manslaughter.

But no hard drugs or firearms were found and armed officers had been sent into the dark building without plans of the interior.

Earlier this month the prosecution of three Sussex Police officers, Supt Christopher Burton, 44, Acting Chief Insp Kevin French, 48, and Det Insp Christopher Siggs, 42, for misconduct was halted at Wolverhampton Crown Court by Mrs Justice Rafferty after the prosecution offered no evidence. A fourth officer, PC Robert Shoesmith, was also cleared of misconduct after the prosecution offered no evidence at the Old Bailey earlier this year.

Speaking for the first time since then, Miss Courtland-Smith, who is now 22, said that in her traumatised state after the shooting she had thought she was going to be shot herself.

Miss Courtland-Smith, who met Mr Ashley a year before his death, told ITV's Tonight With Trevor McDonald: "They took me out of the front door and steered me to an unmarked car.

"I believed they were going to take me away and shoot me dead because of what they had done they were going to go and kill me now.

"I was saying 'I'm not going in that car'.

"How did I know they were not going to kill me?"

Four weeks ago police marksman PC Christopher Sherwood, 34, who fired the fatal shot in Mr Ashley's bedroom with a Heckler & Koch MP5 rifle, was cleared of murder and manslaughter.