Protesters hold banners with a photograph of Myles Gray in Burnaby, B.C., in 2023. Gray died following a confrontation with several police officers in 2015.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
One of the Vancouver officers who responded to the scene after a man was beaten by police in 2015 faced questioned of discrepancies between notes he took that day and how he describes the situation more than 10 years later.
Constable Chris Bowater told a public hearing Friday that he saw Myles Gray in the “recovery position” on his side, unconscious but breathing.
Under questioning from hearing counsel Brock Martland, Bowater said there were no officers on Gray’s back. However, his notes include a reference to Gray regaining consciousness and “lifting members off back.”
Martland asked Bowater to explain how Gray could be lifting police off his back if he was in the recovery position on his side.
“At this time, after 10 and a half years, I don’t remember why I wrote what I did, but nobody was on his back,” the officer said.
The inquiry, held by the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, is looking into the actions of several Vancouver police officers who had a violent encounter with Gray before he died. Police were originally called to a complaint of a man who sprayed a woman with water from a garden hose.
Bowater, who has experience as a paramedic, told the inquiry that if he had seen anyone on Gray’s back in such a way that it would have interfered with his breathing, he would have moved them.
“I did not tell anybody to get off his back because nobody was on his back.”
Bowater told the inquiry on Thursday that Gray began grunting, swearing and spitting, as two officers restrained him.
He said Gray made a “fast twist” out of the officer’s grip and “put himself face down into the grass”
When Gray stopped breathing, Bowater testified that he began chest compressions until he was relieved by a Burnaby firefighter.
A coroner’s inquest in 2023 heard that Gray was left with injuries including a fractured eye socket, a crushed voice box and ruptured testicles.
Other testimony heard on Friday included that of Constable Brian London, who said he arrived on the scene after ambulances were already there.
He said from what he heard broadcast over the police radio on his way, the situation sounded “chaotic” and like “nothing was under control.”
London said when he arrived he saw Constable Kory Folkestad standing by an ambulance appearing to be in a daze and that Folkestad told him he had been punched. He said Constable Nick Thompson was holding a piece of gauze to the top of his head.
London said he walked to where Gray was being held and saw him on his belly on the grass while one officer had a knee “across his bum or thighs.”
He said Gray was “grumbling, growling. I could see he was kicking his feet.”
He told the hearing that he also spent time in an ambulance with Constable Hardeep Sahota and she appeared “quite scared.”
“I believe she either almost started crying or crying a couple of times and she did make a couple statements that she felt like she was going to die,” he said.