‘I have no forgiveness for you’

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This article was published 26/10/2023 (682 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Their voices choked with tears, family members of a woman randomly slain on a dark country road nearly five years ago vented pain and fury at her killer in a Winnipeg courtroom Wednesday.

Twenty-year-old Hailey Dugay died Nov. 17, 2018, after the truck she was travelling in was struck by gunfire on a gravel road near Fraserwood, 90 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

William Ryerson Comber, 24, was convicted by a jury last December of second-degree murder.

“She was a huge light in my life,” said Dugay’s grandmother Donna Martin. “No longer will I see her beautiful face, hear her beautiful laughter, witness her joking personality.

“I fear for my other grandchildren,” Martin said. “Is it not safe to go out for a drive? Or to go out for a night with friends? I still wake up in tears, praying this is some terrible nightmare until reality sets in again and again … I have no forgiveness for you.”

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.

The minimum sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 10 years. Prosecutors are urging King’s Bench Justice Vic Toews to order that Comber serve 15 years in prison before he is eligible for parole, while defence lawyer Martin Glazer urged Toews not to raise the period of parole ineligibility.

Toews will sentence Comber on Friday.

Jurors heard testimony at trial 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 and Paluk got into a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend.

Paluk was kicked out of the bar and a short time later 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.”

Jurors heard Dugay and a couple of friends were passengers in a truck being driven by her boyfriend when they approached Paluk in the middle of the road holding a rifle. Paluk told them to “just keep going.” Several shots were fired at the truck as it sped away, one them hitting Dugay in the rear passenger seat.

Dugay’s boyfriend drove to Teulon hospital where she was declared dead.

None of the witnesses saw Paluk firing a rifle. Prosecutors alleged Comber was standing at the side of the road where he could not be seen and fired at the truck as it passed.

“The choices you made have changed so many lives,” Dugay’s mother Dana DesRoches told Comber. “You could have chosen to stay in the car. You could have chosen not to fire a gun …. Her life had just begun. She was innocent and didn’t deserve to die because of your choices.”

DesRoches, an emergency-room nurse in Gimli, said she was just finishing her shift when she received a call saying Hailey had been shot.

“Getting that call, a call I have had to make to so many families in 19 years of work, was terrifying,” she said. “So many thoughts rang through my head .… Why would anyone shoot my baby? I rushed to Teulon hospital not knowing at the time I was too late.”

Earlier, court heard testimony from a defence witness, clinical psychologist Dr. Kent Somers, who examined Comber and wrote a report concluding he was a low risk to reoffend.

Prosecutors urged Toews to give Somers’ report little weight, arguing he relied too heavily on interviews with Comber and his mother, and did not probe deeply enough into his behaviour while in custody, including breaking out of jail after he was denied bail.

Court heard Comber was being held at Headingley Correctional Centre in November 2019 when he applied for bail and was denied release. He was upset he was denied bail and would not be able to see his young son, who was set to undergo heart surgery, court was told.

Days later, Comber was helping unload a bread truck when he threatened the driver with a utility knife, stole his keys and drove through a jail gate. During the subsequent police chase, Comber nearly hit three people, including one police officer, before losing control of the vehicle and sliding into a ditch.

He later pleaded guilty to escaping from custody and flight from police and was sentenced to 31/2 years in prison.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca