Unknown if police officers will testify at hearing into death of Myles Gray: OPCC

VANCOUVER — The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner says it’s not known if a public hearing into the death of Myles Gray will include testimony from a group of seven Vancouver officers involved in the fatal 2015 confrontation in Burnaby, B.C.

The office’s general counsel Brian Smith says they can’t be compelled to testify at public hearings, unlike others scheduled to testify at the hearing starting next week, including civilian witnesses and other police officers who attended the scene.

Gray, who was 33, died after a beating that left him with injuries including ruptured testicles and fractures in his eye socket, nose, voice box and rib.

The seven officers were cleared of wrongdoing by a discipline authority in October 2024, but police complaint commissioner Prabhu Rajan says there is still “meaningful uncertainty as to what happened.”

Smith says the Police Act allows officers named as respondents to choose whether they testify at a public hearing, but an adjudicator can draw an “adverse inference” from an officer’s failure to testify.

The schedule shared in advance of the hearing in Vancouver says the first witness will be Margaret Gray, the mother of Myles Gray, followed by three civilian witnesses who saw the man before his deadly interaction with police on Aug. 13, 2015.

The schedule for the 10-week public hearing remains tentative and subject to change on short notice, Smith says.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 15, 2026.

The Canadian Press