Policeman accused over woman's arrest is found dead on Snowdon

A police officer, who was cleared of wrongdoing after CCTV cameras showed him punching a woman he was trying to arrest, has died after being found on a mountainside in North Wales.

PC Anthony Mulhall, of South Yorkshire Police, was reported missing from his home in the Rotherham area on Wednesday and died in hospital yesterday after he was found on Mount Snowdon. His death comes just months after Michael Todd, chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, was found dead on Snowdon in March this year. The circumstances of the police chief's death are still being investigated and an inquest has been opened and adjourned.

PC Mulhall was removed from frontline duties in March last year after it emerged that he hit Toni Comer, 21, in order to subdue her so she could be handcuffed. But in December, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided no South Yorkshire officer would be charged over the incident.

The IPCC launched an investigation after Ms Comer complained she had been assaulted by two police officers during her arrest on suspicion of causing criminal damage to a car outside the Niche nightclub in Sheffield on 30 July 2006. In a statement obtained by The Guardian in March, PC Mulhall said: "I had to use brute force and both hands to bend her arm at the elbow to place her wrist in the cuff."

Ms Comer later pleaded guilty to criminal damage and was given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay £250 compensation. The IPCC found the allegations that two officers assaulted Ms Comer were unsubstantiated and said PC Mulhall had used "justified and proportionate force".