AUBURN – Police were called to Androscoggin County Superior Court Tuesday morning to deal with a man who got out of control after he was told that he couldn’t bring his Pepsi into the courtroom.

Ras Masood, 56, was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after sheriff’s deputies used pepper spray to calm him down.

A former doctor who lost his license to practice medicine in 1998, Masood was in court to face a previous charge of domestic assault.

According to Lt. Glenn Holt of the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department, Masood got angry after a court officer told him that he could not bring his soda into the courtroom.

“He went off the deep end. He started hollering and screaming,” Holt said.

Someone in the courthouse called 911, and officers from Auburn and the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department responded within minutes.

Holt said the officers tried to calm Masood, but he continued to scream. People who were in the courthouse at the time said Masood was yelling about his rights as an American and something about U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Eventually, Holt said, the officers went to arrest Masood, and Masood attempted to fight them off. That is when one of the officers sprayed him with pepper spray, and the others helped carry him down the courthouse stairs, then down the hallway to the jail.

It was the second time that Masood’s court proceedings for the domestic assault charge have been delayed.

He was scheduled to go to trial in May. But, on the morning that a jury was scheduled to be picked, Masood told a court officer he was having chest pains and he was taken away in an ambulance.

Masood complained of chest pains again Tuesday as the officers were lugging him away.

A former physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist, Masood practiced medicine in Lewiston until 1995 when his license was suspended for “inappropriate prescribing practices.”

According to documents provided by the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine, he had a long history of prescribing large quantities of pain medication and other powerful narcotics to people with mental health and substance abuse problems.

His license was suspended after two of his patients were treated for overdoses at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center.

At Masood’s request, his hearing before the licensing board was delayed until April 1998, at which time the board agreed to continue his suspension until he completed a year-long, board-approved fellowship program.

Masood’s license has remained suspended because he never got the additional training, said Randal Manning, director of the licensing board.

A conviction on the domestic assault charge or the charges stemming from Tuesday’s incident could cause Masood to lose his license for good, Manning said.