Man gets life for answering punch with fatal gunshot

A Winnipeg man who responded to a surprise punch to his face with fatal gunfire has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 13 years.

A jury convicted 52-year-old Adam Morrissette earlier this year of second-degree murder in the April 2024 shooting death of Bill Brian Duck, 28.

“Civilized people simply cannot live the way you acted that day,” King’s Bench Justice Chris Martin told Morrissette at a sentencing hearing Friday morning, noting Morrissette has shown no signs of remorse or acceptance of responsibility for the killing.

Morrissette shot Duck “in a manner consistent with your character,” Martin told him. “He disrespected you and you weren’t going to take it.”

Jurors heard evidence at trial Morrissette had been consuming meth at his home with three friends when the group drove to another friend’s Flora Avenue home to do laundry.

Duck was standing with a friend outside a house two doors away when Duck, intoxicated by alcohol, walked up to Morrissette and said something before punching him in the face and walking away.

A witness testified Morrissette pulled out a gun from his backpack, said “Somebody needs to be shot,” and shot Duck.

Morrissette denied having a gun and claimed in a police statement that after Duck punched him, he ushered a female friend to her house door when he heard a shot.

After he was shot, Duck staggered back to his friend’s home and collapsed at the front door before being taken inside. Police and paramedics arrived minutes later, and Duck was rushed to Health Sciences Centre, where he died.

After the shooting, Morrissette and the group returned to his house “and continued on as if nothing had happened,” Martin said.

“Which in and of itself is kind of remarkable and perhaps shameful in terms of how normalized this type of activity in the North End of Winnipeg appears to be,” he said.

Police arrested Morrissette nine days later after stopping him for an unrelated matter near the intersection of Burrows Avenue and McKenzie Street.

A subsequent analysis of his cellphone revealed text exchanges between Morrissette and another party discussing the cash purchase of a Glock handgun.

Morrissette had been released from prison just two months before the shooting after serving a sentence for drug and property offences and was bound by a court order not to possess any weapons.

Morrissette has a long criminal record, but also has long breaks between arrests, including between 2005 and 2015 when he did not reoffend, showing he can be a productive member of society, his lawyer Matt Gould argued.

“Mr. Morrissette has shown he can do it, and he has done it, for a substantial period of time,” Gould said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca