Man who killed truck passenger handed new 12-year sentence

Manitoba’s highest court has given a man who shot at a passing truck and killed a 20-year-old woman a 12-year prison sentence for manslaughter.

William Ryerson Thomas Comber, now in his mid 20s, was found guilty of second-degree murder by a jury in December 2022 for the killing of Hailey Dugay on Nov. 17, 2018. Comber was later sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 12 years.

Dugay died after the truck she was travelling in was struck by gunfire late at night on a gravel road near Fraserwood, 90 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

The Court of Appeal struck down Comber’s murder conviction earlier this year and ruled he was instead guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter.

In a decision issued Monday, the court ruled Comber should serve 12 years. Considering time served pre-trial, his sentence will amount to a little less than five more years behind bars.

“Discharging a firearm at the taillights of a fleeing occupied vehicle on an unlit gravel road while it was swerving is extremely dangerous conduct. It involves the conscious creation of a substantial risk of harm and demonstrates a marked indifference to the potentially life-threatening consequences to others,” said Court of Appeal Justice Janice leMaistre, writing on behalf of the court.

“In my view, the appropriate sentence in this case is 12 years’ imprisonment. This sentence is the sentence that would have been an appropriate sentence had (Comber) been sentenced for manslaughter… rather than murder.”

The appeal court, in its earlier decision, found the jury’s verdict was unreasonable, as shooting a firearm with the intent to damage property — the vehicle’s taillights — is not necessarily synonymous with the intent to injure someone. The court ruled that it could not be said with the required certainty that Comber intended to shoot an occupant of the vehicle.

At trial, prosecutors urged jurors to reject a manslaughter verdict and argued that Comber, an experienced hunter, would have been fully aware of the consequences of firing at a moving vehicle.

Another man, Jesse Paluk, spent nine months in jail before a murder charge against him was dropped after police confirmed the bullet that killed Dugay did not come from his gun.

Paluk and Comber had been hunting earlier that day and still had their rifles in Paluk’s truck when they went to the Fraserwood Hotel bar that evening.

Paluk got into a fight with the new boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend and was kicked out of the bar.

A short time later, Paluk was relieving himself on the side of a gravel road when he saw three trucks approaching in the distance. Fearing he was going to suffer a second beating, Paluk stood in the middle of the road with a rifle and told Comber, who had arrived with a friend in his own vehicle, to “have his back.”

Dugay and a couple of friends were passengers in a truck being driven by her boyfriend when they approached Paluk, who was holding a rifle, in the middle of the road. Paluk told them to “just keep going.”

Several shots were fired at the truck as it sped away, one of them hitting Dugay, who was sitting in the rear passenger seat.

Dugay’s boyfriend drove to a Teulon hospital, where she was declared dead. None of the witnesses saw Paluk fire a rifle. At trial, prosecutors argued Comber was standing at the side of the road where he could not be seen and fired at the truck as it passed.

Dugay’s death has had a “profound and enduring effect” on her family and friends, including those who were in the truck at the time she was shot, said leMaistre.

“In their victim impact statements, they described the victim as a kind, vibrant, and compassionate young woman, approaching her 21st birthday, whose life was cut short,” the judge wrote.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca