Mother of Myles Gray tells of ‘screaming and screaming’ after police-beating death

By Canadian Press on January 19, 2026.

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.

She 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.”

None of the seven Vancouver police officers involved in the fatal confrontation with Gray, who was suffering a mental health crisis, were ever charged or found by the police to have committed wrongdoing.

The seven denied allegations of abuse of authority and neglect of duty related to his death on Monday.

Five attended the start of the hearing, with two absent but represented by lawyers.

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, and testified that her son began exhibiting strange behaviour around the age of 18 and he was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

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.

In 2023, a coroner’s inquest into Gray’s death found he died by homicide, although coroner Larry Marzinzik told the jury that the term is neutral and does not imply fault or blame.

A paramedic at the inquest said Gray’s bruising was so severe that he initially did not appear to be a white man.

Outside the 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 on a break from the hearing 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.”

Lawyer Brian Smith, general counsel for the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, told reporters last week that it’s unknown if any of the seven officers will testify, as they cannot be compelled to do so.

The seven members facing the allegations are constables Kory Folkestad, Eric Birzneck, Derek Cain, Josh Wong, Beau Spencer, Hardeep Sahota and Nick Thompson.

Cain and Folkestad are absent from the hearing before adjudicator Elizabeth Arnold-Bailey, a retired B.C. Supreme Court judge, for medical reasons.

Gray’s family sought the hearing after a discipline authority cleared the seven officers of misconduct in 2024, but public hearing counsel Brad Hickford says the authority noted “shortcomings” in the discipline process.

Margaret Gray said in a statement last week she hoped the hearing revealed the full truth about her son’s death and why “accountability failed,” after none of the officers involved in the fatal altercation were ever charged.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 19, 2026.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press