VANCOUVER — A public hearing into the 2015 police beating death of Myles Gray that got underway in Vancouver this week has been adjourned after a lawyer used a strong obscenity to describe someone in a remark captured by a microphone.
The long-awaited hearing by the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner that is scheduled to last 10 weeks was halted midway through Wednesday’s testimony and a posting on its audio feed says it will not resume until Monday morning.
The live audio stream of Wednesday’s proceeding captured the remark, in which a lawyer whispered that another person was “stupid,” calling them an obscenity sometimes used to describe a woman.
The remark came amid a discussion between lawyers and adjudicator Elizabeth Arnold-Bailey, a retired B.C. Supreme Court judge, about the need to play a series of police recordings at the hearing.
Gray died after a violent altercation with a group of Vancouver police officers in August 2015.
The seven officers have denied misconduct at the hearing, which was requested by Gray’s family, and none of the officers has ever been charged or disciplined over the deadly incident.
Several lawyers involved in the hearing declined to comment on the reason for the adjournment, which was called after Arnold-Bailey held an in-camera session on Wednesday following the comment.
The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner did not immediately respond on Thursday to requests for comment. It has previously called the hearing one of the biggest it has ever held.
“This public hearing will be one of the largest in terms of the numbers of officers and legal counsel involved, the volume of documentary evidence disclosed, and its projected length of ten weeks,” it said in a statement last week.
But the adjournment has thrown the hearing schedule off track after less than three days.
Witnesses who were tentatively scheduled to appear this week but whose testimony has now been postponed include three Vancouver Police forensics officers and another VPD officer who attended the scene where Gray died, near the boundary of Vancouver and Burnaby.
More police witnesses, Vancouver Police Union representatives, as well as three firefighters and a paramedic who attended the scene were due to testify next week.
They are among more that 30 witnesses expected to testify over the course of the hearing, the first of whom was Margaret Gray, Myles Gray’s mother, who spoke on Monday.
A recording of her 911 call reporting her son missing was played as well, after she testified about his mental health.
Other witnesses who testified this week included civilians who observed the 33-year-old before the fatal altercation.
On Tuesday, the hearing heard another 911 call from witness Muhammed Reza, who testified that he came upon Gray after he’d sprayed Reza’s mother with a hose outside their housing complex.
Andreah Pilgrim, another civilian witness, testified on Tuesday that she’d seen Gray near her workplace on the day of the altercation, pacing up and down the street and acting strange.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 22, 2026.
Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press
