Al Hixon installed some carpeting for his residential construction business one Saturday morning. Then he took his Jaguar out of winter storage and stopped for some fresh oil at a Sinclair station near his Golden Valley home back on April 2, 2005.

The next thing he knew, police officers were throwing him face down on the pavement, jumping on his back, handcuffing him, placing a boot on his neck and shooting pepper spray in his eyes and nostrils, according to his testimony at a federal excessive-force trial Friday in St. Paul.

"I was scared and nervous and asked: 'What did I do? What did I do?' I thought I was going to die," Hixon, 47, told eight jurors during two hours on the witness stand that were punctuated with tears and sobs.

Attorney Jon Iverson, representing Golden Valley and two of its police officers, said Hixon was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. A U.S. Bank outlet at the nearby Byerly's had just been robbed.

Police swarmed into the service station, saw Hixon allegedly trying to run and restrained him.

"Mr. Hixon was, unfortunately, at the scene of a high-risk stop and panicked, and officers took the actions they took," Iverson said.

Hixon testified that police handcuffed him before spraying him at point-blank range with pepper spray. Police insist they sprayed him first when he resisted and then cuffed him.

Hixon is seeking damages in excess of $75,000, alleging his civil rights were violated by excessive force, battery and assault at the hands of officers Christine McCarville and Mario Hernandez, who stands 6-foot-6 and weighs 280 pounds.

Although Hixon's lawyers are not formally making this a racial discrimination case, skin color is key to the trial, which is expected to go to jurors next week.

Dispute over what was said

"I told them, 'If this is a black thing, you have the wrong black man,'" Hixon testified. "She [McCarville] said: 'That's what you all say.'"

Police deny that exchange ever happened. Hixon's attorney, Andrew Parker, said the original police call on the bank robbery mentioned a white suspect. A white man was later convicted and sentenced to prison for the heist.

Iverson said that two black men in a van at the service station were also arrested as accomplices and that Hixon was seen moving away from the van.

Respected in community

Ron Feist, who manages the service station, told police that the man handcuffed in the back of their squad car was a long-time customer who wasn't involved in the bank robbery. Hixon was still taken to the police station and booked for obstructing justice before paramedics arrived and had the handcuffs removed about an hour later.

"I couldn't breathe. I was vomiting and coughing up mucous and blood, gasping for air," Hixon said.

His wife and three children, then ages 11, 9 and 1, found him hollering in pain in the emergency room later that day at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale.

"Al was screaming: 'Why did they do this to me? Don't let me die,'" his wife, Sheri Hixon, a social worker, testified. "The kids were trembling."