VANCOUVER — The mother of Myles Gray, who died after a beating from a group of Vancouver police officers more than a decade ago, has told the first day of a public hearing into his death of her shock at being told her son had died after she called 911 to report him missing.
To identify him, police did not show Margaret Gray photos of her dead son, but instead showed her the necklaces he wore.
“They were caked in mud and blood,” she said on Monday at a hearing called by British Columbia’s police complaint commissioner in downtown Vancouver that is scheduled to last 10 weeks.
Gray said she was met by members of the Independent Investigations Office, and “at that point, I dropped on the ground and started screaming and screaming and screaming.”
The long-awaited public hearing into Myles Gray’s death on Aug. 13, 2015, included cross-examination of his mother by lawyers for the Vancouver police officers involved in the fatal confrontation that occurred near the boundary of Vancouver and Burnaby, after Gray was reported for spraying someone with a garden hose.
The lawyers asked Margaret Gray about her son’s mental health and history of drug use at the hearing. Several other Vancouver police officers were in attendance, both inside and outside the room at UBC’s Robson Square location, and they said they were there for public safety purposes.
None of the seven officers involved in the fatal confrontation with Gray, who was suffering a mental health crisis, was ever charged or found by the police to have committed wrongdoing.
The officers all denied allegations of abuse of authority and neglect of duty related to Gray’s death on Monday, but it’s not clear whether any of them will testify, since the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner cannot compel them to do so.
Constables Eric Birzneck, Josh Wong, Beau Spencer, Hardeep Sahota and Nick Thompson attended the start of the hearing in person, while constables Derek Cain and Kory Folkestad were absent for medical reasons but represented by lawyers.
Gray’s family had sought the hearing before retired B.C. Supreme Court judge Elizabeth Arnold-Bailey after a discipline authority cleared the seven officers of misconduct in 2024, but public hearing counsel Brad Hickford said the authority noted “shortcomings” in the discipline process.
The hearing heard a recording of the 911 call Margaret Gray placed on the day of her 33-year-old son’s death on Aug. 13, 2015.
She said her son, from Sechelt, was in Vancouver that day making deliveries for his floral business, and an employee had called her about Myles abandoning his work van without his keys or wallet, with thousands of dollars’ worth of product still in need of delivery.
She is heard telling the 911 dispatcher that it was unusual for her son to just “wander off” while working.
She said she was never asked by police or the coroner to identify the body of her son, who suffered injuries including ruptured testicles and fractures in his eye socket, nose, voice box and rib. A paramedic at a 2023 coroner’s inquest said Gray’s bruising was so severe that he initially did not appear to be a white man.
That inquest found Gray died by homicide, although coroner Larry Marzinzik told the jury that the term is neutral and does not imply fault or blame.
Margaret Gray testified on Monday that a few weeks before the deadly encounter, her son had been stopped in his own vehicle and handcuffed by an RCMP officer in Sechelt who mistakenly believed he’d stolen it.
She said the police stop had “terrified” her son, and he’d texted a friend about suffering an anxiety attack.
Outside Monday’s hearing, Gray’s sister Melissa Gray said she remembered her brother for his humour, and his death “ripped apart” her family.
She said it was “triggering” being in the room with some of the officers involved in his death, and told reporters that the “system doesn’t make sense.”
Security at the hearing includes screening through a metal detector. “They killed someone, we did not, but yet we have to go through a metal detector?” she said.
She said she wanted the police officers to be “ashamed of what they did to my brother.”
“My brother is a good person, and no one deserves this. Especially not somebody with mental health issues, because that’s not how you treat somebody. You don’t treat somebody like an animal,” she said.
Erin White said she was a friend of Myles Gray, and it was hard to listen to his character be “assassinated,” when the focus should be on the officers and “not the victim.”
In the hearing, Glenn Orris, lawyer for Cain, had asked Margaret Gray about her son’s use of drugs, including steroids and marijuana.
She replied that she had “no knowledge” of her son using steroids, but testified that she didn’t like how marijuana changed his behaviour, and made him do “goofy” things like wrapping a T-shirt around his head and going barefoot.
“He was never violent. He was never aggressive,” Gray said.
Gray testified that her son had an episode at 18 years old where he thought he was a member of the hip-hop group The Wu-Tang Clan, and jumped on her car. The family ended up taking him to hospital.
“I don’t think jumping on a car is what one would consider normal behaviour,” she said.
Her son, she said, was later admitted to a facility in Victoria and diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Under questioning from Mike Shirreff, a lawyer for Birzneck, she said she didn’t know about her son’s charges for assault in 2004 and possession of a controlled substance charge in 2005.
Hickford said the hearing would include evidence from 33 witnesses.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 19, 2026.
Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press
