A Vancouver police officer says Gray 'was manhandling me with just a handcuffed arm' in the minutes before his death.

A Vancouver police officer who was attempting to arrest and handcuff Myles Gray just before he died during the struggle said Gray was the strongest man he had ever encountered.

Const. Beau Spencer, who described himself as a “decent-sized guy,” had arrived to provide “cover” to five other officers in the backyard of a house near the Burnaby boundary on Aug. 13, 2015, he told a hearing of the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner before adjudicator retired Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Arnold-Bailey.

He had already heard on the radio that fellow officers were having trouble putting Gray, who had sprayed a resident with a water hose, into custody because of his resisting.

“He was overwhelmingly built, I would say almost like someone in a bodybuilder magazine,” he told the hearing.

Gray was wearing shorts and no shirt, and Spencer said, “I hadn’t seen somebody of that build other than in a magazine, to be completely honest. The (low) level of body fat … and the size of his muscles.”

Spencer testified he had trouble holding onto Gray’s forearm to try to pin it behind his back to have another officer handcuff him because Gray was sweating profusely and his arm was slippery.

He also said he remembered Gray’s muscles were flexed and his face was red and sweaty and that he was making loud “animalistic noises,” not speaking any discernible words, and thrashing his head from side to side as he was resisting restraint.

He said he suspected Gray was in a state of “excited delirium,” a term used mostly by police to describe someone who exhibits superhuman strength, sometimes after consuming cocaine or other drugs, a condition that’s considered a medical emergency. Or he thought Gray might be on drugs or both, he said.

Gray was on his stomach, with his arm underneath him and Spencer worried he may have been able to reach into his waistband to reach a weapon and worried also he could use his arm to push himself to a standing position.

“When I did grab hold of his wrist, I experienced strength that I had never experienced before in my life,” he said.

“It was the first time I wasn’t able to use my strength to my advantage to be able to manipulate his arm into a position I’d be able to cuff him.”

That was “surprising and worrisome,” he said, which led him to escalate his level of force, as allowed through police procedure and policy, to strike him to get him to submit to repeated verbal commands to stop resisting.

He testified he struck Gray with a closed fist “as hard as I could” on his deltoid on the opposite arm, while kneeling near Gray’s hip area. He said this would normally cause a detainee to momentarily lose muscle control, but with Gray it had no effect.

“He appeared to be completely immune to pain,” Spencer testified.

He was also trying to squeeze the muscle between his forearms “to get pain compliance.”

The struggle lasted seconds to a couple of minutes, he recalled, and eventually he and another officer were able to cuff Gray’s wrists and hobble his ankles. He said Gray’s breath was irregular and they were able to put him in the recovery position, on his side.

Gray was no longer tense or thrashing and his muscles were no longer flexed, Spencer said. The other officer, a former paramedic, was tending to him and Gray’s breathing became more regular and he appeared to be conscious.

He was no longer making the noises and was making movements to rock himself to a standing position, so Spencer pinned his torso and arm with his knees and his own body to prevent him from getting up.

And while in this position, Spencer said Gray looked up at him as if he was waking up form shock and said, “What’s going on?” and he appeared to have calmed down.

But seconds later, he started thrashing again and bucked Spencer off his back. Spencer said he was thrown and landed on his back.

“He was manhandling me with a handcuffed arm,” he said. “There are no words to describe how I felt in that moment, just being a bigger guy and being thrown off like that.”

And then Gray went limp, and he and the other officer put him in the recovery position again and “then I backed right off,” he said.

The cuffs were removed “when he went into that state. When he lost consciousness, or what I believed to be him losing consciousness.”

He said he remembered Gray’s face was bright red and blue when he left the area and went down the steps to the front of the house. Soon after he learned Gray had died, he said.

Under terms of the B.C. Police Act, Arnold-Bailey is reviewing the evidence, including witness testimony, before ruling on whether allegations of police misconduct against the seven officers have been proven.