A First Nations peacemaker who died in custody after officers deployed capsicum spray to break up a nearby brawl is “much more than a statistic”, an inquest has been told. Gregory Merriman, 58, was housed at the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre in Sydney when a fight broke out among his fellow inmates on December 27, 2022. An autopsy found Mr Merriman died of a heart attack. The capsicum spray made it “instantly hard to breathe” and had been deployed in response to a brawl over holiday cookies, another inmate said. “It was a couple of days in the making but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”Hours later, Mr Merriman was declared dead.