"When I saw where the vehicle was I knew we shouldn't have been there."
The officer's surprise was revealed to the court in Detective Sergeant Katie Smith's two-hour transcript of interviews after the court resumed for the fifth day of a trial in which the officers have pleased guilty to separate charges of assaulting Mr McPeake with a weapon.
Names of the officers are suppressed pending the outcome of the trial before Judge Phillip Cooper and a jury of six men and six women.
The charges relate to an incident early on the morning of March 13, 2015, a few hours after Mr McPeake, 53, had fled his bashing of his 76-year-old father with a cosh during a rare visit to the parents' home in Hastings.
An officer spotted the vehicle at 12.49am, and retreated to await back-up, although unaware whether there was any occupant.
Surrounded and forced from the two-door Honda CRV in a struggle, the 179kg Mr McPeake fell to the ground where his condition deteriorated quickly.
He died at the scene, but the jury has been reminded by Judge Cooper and Crown prosecutor Ben Vanderkolk that there was no "causal link" between the death and anything done by any of the officers.
The officer said he had been on a shift starting at 4pm and was called to the initial assault at an address in Prospect Rd, which was itself a surprise, he said, calling it a "prosperous" area.
He went to Westshore after learning the vehicle had been found, and was in a party of six officers assigned to advance on the vehicle while acting sergeant Glenn Baker drove a patrol car to illuminate the scene as he issued loud hailer to Mr McPeake that he was under arrest and should get out of the vehicle.
When there was no response to multiple requests, other than movements within the vehicle officers interpreted as suggesting Mr McPeake may have been about to try to drive off, or been trying to grab a weapon, the officers advanced on the vehicle, smashing its windows, and applying pepper spray, before Tasers were fired without apparent impact on Mr McPeake.
Flailing his arms, and having struck at least one officer, Mr McPeake he was then challenged by two police dogs, and ultimately ended face-down on the ground as police tried to secure cuffs.
The officer said he noticed the obesity of the man and decided a check on his health was needed, but Mr McPeake began to vomit, throwing some officers into panic as the officer called for a defibrillator and for an ambulance, and told them it would be alright if they followed what they had learned in their training.