Holidaymakers described yesterday how they saw a father push his two young children from a hotel balcony in Crete before plunging after them.

Six-year-old Liam Hogan died from head injuries caused by the 50ft fall from the fourth floor. His two-year-old sister Mia and their father John Hogan survived despite serious injuries.

Kerry Jackman, on holiday from Hull, told Liam’s inquest that she had been making her way to a coach at the end of a two-week holiday when she heard loud arguing from the hotel and looked up. She said: “It was like a maniac shouting, in a rage almost. I said, ‘Something awful is going on up there’. I saw these two little children stood on the balcony then I saw this figure behind them.

“I saw these two little children come off the balcony feet first as if they had been pushed. As I looked up I saw this adult man falling almost instantaneously. The little girl was coming down first. The little boy had his arms out as if they were trying to grab each other almost. It was just like slow motion, the adult male caught up with the two children, then you just heard thuds on the floor.”

Ms Jackman began screaming: “Oh my God he’s killed his kids.”

Another tourist, Sarah Davidson from Hull, said she heard a “horrific” argument, looked up and saw a man push the two children off the balcony before falling after them. She said: “I’ve never heard such a horrific argument going on. I saw two children stood on the balcony on the edge.

“They were stood there motionless. “The male voice, I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it was so horrific . . . That’s when the male came forward and pushed them off.” Her husband, Iain Davidson, thought he saw the man try to grab the children as they fell before toppling over the railing himself.

Mr Davidson said: “There was screaming as the children fell. The adult appeared to try and grab them and the momentum appeared to take his body over the side. It was quite strange. The three were in the air, then they hit the ground separately. There were three loud thuds.” Earlier the children’s mother, Natasha Visser, 35, who has remarried since the tragedy in August 2006, told the inquest that she and her husband had been having an angry row in their room at the Petra Mare hotel.

He had insisted on cutting short their holiday after she told him she was moving back to her mother’s and was taking the children with her.

Mrs Visser said her husband demanded to know what she was doing when he saw her repacking the family’s suitcases. Liam was crying loudly. She told the inquest: “He stared at me with a crazed look I had never seen before. I didn’t know what it meant.

“At some point I had my back to him but I was aware he was charging around the room. Then I turned around and there was no one there. I knew at that point he had gone over.” For a second there was silence. Then she heard a woman at the front of the hotel screaming: “Oh my God.”

Mrs Visser called reception to get an ambulance but could not bring herself to look over the balcony, scared of what she might see. By the time she got downstairs a small crowd had gathered.

Mr Hogan was cleared of murder and manslaughter after standing trial in a Greek court in January.

The court heard evidence that he was suffering an “earthquake of psychosis” as a result of the breakdown of his marriage and had not been in control of his actions. He is still being treated in a psychiatric hospital near Athens.

The holidaymakers who gave evidence at yesterday’s inquest in Bristol had not testified at his trial. The couple, who lived in Bradley Stoke near Bristol, had been on a holiday to try to patch up their marriage.

Mrs Visser wants her former husband to stand trial in Britain, although the Crown Prosecution Service has said this is unlikely, whatever the verdict of the inquest.

The coroner, Paul Forrest, will deliver his verdict today.

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