Protesters hold banners with a photograph of Myles Gray, who died following a confrontation with several police officers in 2015, before the start of a coroner's inquest into his death, in Burnaby, B.C., on Monday, April 17, 2023. The first officer to have an interaction with Myles Gray told a British Columbia coroner's inquest that she wasn't thinking about mental health and instead believed intoxication was driving the man's "bizarre" behaviour. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
BURNABY, B.C. – A Vancouver police officer told a British Columbia coroner’s jury that he punched Myles Gray in the head as hard as he could several times because he didn’t think anything else would work to subdue the man, other than shooting him.
Const. Kory Folkestad testified on the third day of the inquest into Gray’s death nearly eight years ago following a beating by several officers that left him with injuries including a fractured eye socket, a crushed voice box and a ruptured testicle.
Folkestad told the jury in Burnaby, B.C., that he and his partner were both in plain clothes when they responded to a call for immediate assistance from a uniformed officer on the day Gray died in August 2015.
When the trio of officers found Gray in a yard, Folkestad said he believed the man wanted to fight them and at one point Gray “tensed every part of his body” and roared.
Folkestad said another officer pepper sprayed Gray before they tried to handcuff him.
“All of a sudden, he just ripped his arms out from us and squared off with us with a speed and strength I couldn’t believe,” Folkestad said.
Folkestad, who told the jury he has been diagnosed with PTSD because of the incident, said he struck Gray in the face multiple times as hard as he could.
“I didn’t think anything else would work at the time and we would have to shoot him,” he said.
At one point during the confrontation, the officer said he was knocked unconscious.
When he woke up, Folkestad said he tried to control one of Gray’s legs before additional officers arrived and he was taken for medical attention.
Folkestad told the jury that when he first saw Gray he believed the 33-year-old was experiencing “excited delirium,” something he said makes people unpredictable with “superhuman strength.”
Prior to the officer’s testimony, coroner Larry Marzinzik provided the jury with what he called a “cautionary note” about the term.
Marzinzik said, to his knowledge, excited delirium is not recognized as a cause of death by most pathologists and “there is still some discussion within the medical community over its relevance” as a cause of death.
The jury members should put less weight on the evidence of a lay person on the topic and would be hearing from a medical expert later, he said.
Several other officers with the Vancouver Police Department are expected to testify at the inquest later Wednesday.
The BC Prosecution Service said in 2020 that charges would not be approved against the officers, saying it couldn’t prove an offence had been committed.
The jury won’t be able to make findings of legal responsibility at the inquest but may make recommendations to prevent similar deaths in the future.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2023.
