PROVIDENCE — A British Royal Navy officer testified yesterday that he saw a heated argument and a young man taking off his shirt in the moments before a Fairfield University student died under the wheels of a bus in Newport five summers ago.

Cmdr. Martin J. Woolley told jurors a passing bus then obscured his view on that May night. The next thing he saw, Woolley said, was a man flailing backward trying to regain his balance.

The man hit the ground, his back first and then his head, he said. The right rear wheel of the bus immediately ran over his head.

Woolley took the stand in Providence County Superior Court during the wrongful-death trial of two former University of Rhode Island students, Jarrad Rocheleau, of Cumberland, and Loren Welsh, of New Jersey. Rocheleau and Welsh are accused in the civil suit of scuffling with Francis J. Marx V, contributing to his death on May 20, 2004, days before he was to give Fairfield’s valedictory address.

Woolley went out May 19 with colleagues from the Naval War College. Marx, of Richboro, Pa., was in Newport attending a Wheaton College formal with his girlfriend. Rocheleau and Welsh were among 300 URI students in town for a pub crawl as part of Senior Week festivities.

It was around closing time when the curbside argument drew Woolley’s attention.

The man who fell did not appear to fall because he was drunk, Woolley testified. He said he went to assist. “He was undoubtedly, immediately dead, and there was nothing I could do for him,” Woolley said. He did not see anyone slap or push him.

He then tried to help people on the scene, one of whom was a hysterical woman in need of sedation and, he feared, heading toward shock, he said.

When the police arrived, they gave the crowd a hard time, he said. He was told he would be arrested if he obstructed officers, said Woolley, who now works at a NATO headquarters in Virginia. “[The police] were different from how I would have performed,” he said.

He said he called the police from Corpus Christi, Texas, where he was stationed, to give a statement. They did not return his call until he asked a friend from Newport to intervene, he said.

The nine-member jury also heard testimony by Newport Detective Kevin Parsonage, who was responsible for developing a plan for policing during the pub crawl. He instructed the event organizer, then-URI student Joseph DeCandido, to have buses pick up and drop off students at the visitors’ center, he said.

DeCandido told him during the night that he had changed the plan and that students would board buses behind the Rhino Bar & Grille to return home. The parking lot was private, so the police had no authority to tell him otherwise, Parsonage said. He issued a bulletin to post extra officers in the area at closing time, around 1 a.m.

DeCandido’s sworn statement was read to jurors, in which he said that Parsonage told him officers would monitor all the pub crawl venues, and that plainclothes and uniform patrols would be posted throughout the city.

He said he was not aware the City of Newport objected to the event until he read it in the paper. The pub crawl was not sanctioned by URI. He made about $1,000 in profits off the $65 ticket sales.

Marx’s parents brought a suit against Rocheleau, Welsh and others after a grand jury declined to hand up criminal indictments. The other initial defendants, including DeCandido and the City of Newport, have been released from the suit. The family is seeking $5 million in damages, said Robert D. Parrillo, the family’s lawyer.

kmulvane@projo.com