Emergency crews responded to an apartment in the 0-100 block of Pinecrest Drive around 4:25p on January 19th on report of a man in medical distress.

Derek Miles, 42, of Dartmouth was found dead at the scene. An autopsy performed on January 20th determined the cause of death to be a homicide.

The death of Derek Miles is the first Halifax homicide of 2018.

Update March 19th
Police have arrested and charged three men in relation to the homicide of Derek Miles. Gregory Maxwell Purvis, 52, George Andrew Purvis, 30, and Murray Robert Timmons, 26, have all been charged with second degree murder.

Update June 13th 2025: Gregory Maxwell Purvis, who is now 60-years-old, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 2018 death of Derek Miles, admitting to fatally stomping and kicking him during a confrontation in Miles’s apartment. Originally convicted of second-degree murder in 2021, Purvis’s conviction was overturned on appeal due to legal errors at trial.

Update July 18th 2025
According to CBC, shortly after being sentenced to time served for a manslaughter conviction, Gregory Maxwell Purvis was freed from custody at the Halifax Law Courts. Having spent seven years behind bars awaiting trial, he departed with sheriffs and packed up boxes of his possessions into a pickup truck parked outside the courthouse.