Manitoba’s top court says jury’s murder verdict was ‘unreasonable’ in rural road shooting

Manitoba’s top court has downgraded a second-degree murder conviction to manslaughter in the shooting death of a 20-year-old woman in 2018.

A Manitoba man serving a life sentence for the murder of a 20-year-old woman has had his conviction downgraded to manslaughter by the province’s highest court in a decision calling the verdict “unreasonable.”

William Comber was found guilty of second-degree murder by a jury in October 2022 in the killing of Hailey Dugay in November 2018. Comber was later sentenced to life in prison without parole for 12 years.

Dugay, 20, was killed after the truck she was a passenger in was hit with gunfire late at night while it travelled down a gravel road near Fraserwood, about 85 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

During the three-week trial, Crown prosecutors urged jurors to reject a manslaughter finding, arguing that Comber—an experienced hunter—knew exactly what pulling the trigger could do.

But the Court of Appeal of Manitoba said in a 54-page written decision dated March 30 that jurors were never presented with direct evidence of what Comber’s intent was when he fired the rifle at the moving vehicle.

“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 Christopher Mainella wrote in a decision on behalf of the court.

‘Wrong place at the wrong time’

According to the filing, jurors heard testimony that Comber and another man, Jesse Paluk, had been hunting earlier that day and still had their guns in Paluk’s truck when they went to a bar in Fraserwood later that evening.

Around 11 p.m., Paluk got into a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend, an altercation that resulted in the bar closing that night.

Shortly afterwards, en route to Gimli, Paluk was urinating on the side of the road when he saw three vehicles approaching. Fearing he was going to “get jumped” due to the bar fight, Paluk stood in the middle of a road with his rifle and told Comber to cover his back.

“The occupants of the three vehicles driving towards Paluk had been at the bar earlier in the evening… but none of them were involved in Paluk’s fight; they were at the wrong place at the wrong time,” reads the document.

Jurors heard that the vehicle Dugay was in slowed down as it approached Paluk and then accelerated, causing the vehicle to fishtail on the road.

Multiple shots were fired as the truck sped away, with the fatal bullet striking near the middle of the tailgate before passing through the rear passenger seat and striking Dugay’s back.

Prosecutors argued that Comber had been shooting at the truck’s taillights—the only visible target from his position some fifty to one hundred yards away in the darkness.

“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 wrote.

“In my judgment, the verdict of a second-degree murder was unreasonable.”

The judge ordered a manslaughter sentencing hearing to take place no later than June 1.

Paluk was originally charged with second-degree murder by police, however, ballistics testing confirmed the rifle he was shooting then did not fire the fatal shot.