Court of Appeal rules death of 20-year-old woman manslaughter

Manitoba’s highest court has struck down the murder conviction handed to a man who shot at a passing truck and killed a 20-year-old woman, ruling he is guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter.

William Comber was found guilty of second-degree murder by a jury in October 2022 for the killing of 20-year-old Hailey Dugay in November 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.

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

Jurors were given no evidence of Comber’s intent when he fired his rifle at the truck, the Court of Appeal of Manitoba said in a 54-page written decision released Tuesday.

“The problem with the reasonableness of the jury’s verdict… is that the act of discharging a firearm with an intention to cause mischief in relation to property is not automatically synonymous with also having an intention to cause bodily harm to a person in close proximity to the mischief being caused,” Justice Chris Mainella said, writing on behalf of the court.

Prosecutors argued at trial that Comber was shooting at the truck’s taillights, the only part of the vehicle he could see, as it fishtailed on the gravel road.

“While the result of the accused’s incautious decision was tragic, it cannot be said with the requisite certainty on these facts that his intention was for an occupant of the vehicle to be shot, as opposed to the vehicle’s taillight,” Mainella said.

Mainella ordered that Comber return to court for sentencing on a charge of manslaughter no later than June 1.

Jurors heard at trial that 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.

Jurors heard testimony that 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 his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend 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.”

Jurors heard that 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 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.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca