‘Excited delirium’: Second Vancouver officer tells of Myles Gray’s fatal arrest

The officer told the hearing he had been trained to regard excited delirium as a medical emergency, not a crime.

No charges have been laid over Gray’s death, which a 2023 coroner’s inquest ruled was a homicide, a term that does not assign legal blame.

A pathologist told the earlier coroners’ inquest that it had been thought “so-called excited delirium syndrome” could result independently in death, but analysis of the published data suggests that’s “quite unlikely.”

Spencer’s lawyer, Claire Hatcher, said in introductory remarks at the public hearing that during a lucid moment by Gray, the officer told him he would be OK, and he was “reassured by a professional police officer who was concerned about his well-being.”

She said Spencer’s role in the arrest had to be “considered distinctly” from those of other officers, since he arrived “after the fight had been ongoing for several minutes.”

Hatcher said Spencer “delivered three or four closed fist strikes, punches” to the shoulder of Gray to get his arm behind his back so he could be handcuffed during the arrest on a lawn.

“I expect Const. Spencer will testify that he and (other) officers then moved Mr. Gray further out from the tree to an open area on the lawn,” she said. “The adjudicator will hear that this is the whole of the force Const. Spencer used.”

She also addressed allegations that Spencer might have neglected his duties by not making notes immediately after the incident.

Hatcher said the hearing would be told that officers in the arrest had gathered at Vancouver police headquarters for a meeting after Gray’s death, where a “union representative or representatives instructed the members, Constable Spencer in particular, not to take any notes, and not to write anything on a computer while the IIO (independent Investigations Office) investigation was underway.”

Spencer’s testimony at the hearing in Vancouver on Thursday came after that of Const. Eric Birzneck, who said he did not agree he had given a “lopsided” account of the altercation by likening Gray to “the Hulk” or a “charging bull.”

Birzneck also denied trying to hide the fact that another officer had punched Gray as they tried to subdue him when the counsel for the commission, Brock Martland, asked him if he was trying to “protect a fellow officer.”

Martland asked Birzneck about his account of the attempt to arrest Gray, questioning whether his evidence omitted certain facts or minimized things to avoid creating problems for the others involved in the confrontation.

Birzneck disagreed and told the hearing his memories had been jogged over time with “pieces of the puzzle” coming together afterward.

He told the hearing earlier this week that Gray displayed incredible strength and appeared “impervious to pain” as police tried to subdue him near the boundary between Burnaby and Vancouver on Aug. 13, 2015.

Birzneck said Thursday that he believed Gray was “arrestable” at the time, with no lawful right to repel officers’ use of force against him.

The seven officers involved in the fatal altercation with Gray are named as respondents in the public hearing, called under the Police Act.

The commissioner’s notice of public hearing said an earlier disciplinary process had dismissed misconduct allegations, but the discipline authority found the process “strangely lopsided” and had to decide the case despite “discrepancies and inconsistencies in statements made by (Vancouver Police Department) members.”

The earlier inquest heard Gray was left with injuries that included a fractured eye socket, crushed voice box and ruptured testicles, while a paramedic said Gray’s bruising was so severe, he initially thought Gray was not a white man.

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

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

‘Excited delirium’: Second Vancouver officer tells of Myles Gray’s fatal arrest

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