‘Heartbroken and devastated’: Hailey Dugay’s family returns to court after murder conviction overturned

A panel of appeals court judges have reserved their decision in the re-sentencing of a man who recently had his murder conviction downgraded.

Nearly eight years after a Manitoba woman was shot and killed in the back of a moving truck, her family and friends were back in a Winnipeg courtroom Wednesday as the man responsible faced resentencing after his murder conviction was reduced to manslaughter.

Hailey Dugay, 20, was killed on Nov. 17, 2018, when the truck she was riding in as a passenger was struck by gunfire from outside the vehicle. The shooting occurred late at night along a gravel road near Fraserwood, Man., approximately 85 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

William Comber, now 27, was originally found guilty of second-degree murder in October 2022 following a jury trial and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 12 years. Comber participated in Wednesday’s hearing by phone from Cowansville Institution in Quebec.

His conviction was successfully appealed in March, when the Court of Appeal substituted a verdict of manslaughter, finding that jurors had never been presented with direct evidence of Comber’s intent when he fired the rifle.

Court previously heard that on the day of the killing, Comber had been deer hunting with another man, Jesse Paluk, and both men still had their rifles in Paluk’s truck when they went to a bar in Fraserwood that evening. Paluk later got into a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend around 11 p.m., prompting the bar to close for the night.

While travelling toward Gimli, Paluk stopped on the side of a gravel road where he spotted three trucks approaching. Fearing he was about to “get jumped” because of the earlier bar fight, he stood in the middle of the road with a loaded rifle and told Comber to “have his back.”

Paluk subsequently fired into the air, while Comber — unknown to any of the vehicles’ occupants — was at the side of the road firing at the passing truck from about 50 to 100 yards away. One of Paluk’s bullets struck the taillight. Another passed through the tailgate and hit Dugay, one of four occupants in the truck, who was seated in the rear passenger seat.

None of the three vehicles’ occupants were involved in Paluk’s fight.

Crown attorney Daniel Chaput argued that Comber should receive a 14-year sentence, while defence counsel Martin Glazer maintained that “justice has been achieved,” noting his client has already spent more than six years in custody. In Canada, manslaughter involving a firearm carries a mandatory minimum sentence of four years.

“That fatal injury wasn’t accidental,” Chaput told the courtroom, with members of both Comber’s and Dugay’s families present. “It’s clear that Mr. Comber, through his words, understood the danger of that firearm… in the hands of a hunter, that long-barrelled firearm can kill.”

Chaput said Comber must have known there was at least one person inside the moving vehicle when he fired in that direction.

“Your bottom line is that in terms of proportionality, this is a case closer to near-murder than near-accident?” asked Court of Appeal Justice Christopher Mainella, one of three justices on the panel.

“Yes,” Chaput responded.

While Glazer acknowledged the “horrible tragedy” that occurred, he characterized it as a “fluke death – unanticipated, unintended, and unforeseen.”

He maintained that Comber was shooting at the truck’s taillight to frighten the occupants — whose vehicle was fishtailing on the gravel road — and that there was no evidence Comber knew Dugay was inside.

“The bullet penetrates six layers of the truck before hitting the victim. The chances of that occurring are very slim, and that’s why I say moral culpability is less in this case than cases in which this court has seen,” Glazer said.

Mainella described sentencing at the Court of Appeal level as “a bit unusual” and called the case “incredibly heartbreaking.”

“[Dugay]’s at the wrong place at the wrong time, and you know, there are some times when you see a case, and something happens, and you can understand why it happened, even if you don’t agree with it. But this one, there’s just nothing. She did nothing,” he said. “There’s just no logic to this, other than just complete stupidity.”

‘Worse than any nightmare’

Dana DesRoches, Dugay’s mother, took the stand to recite a victim impact statement she had previously read more than three years earlier. At times wiping away tears, she described her daughter as a “beautiful, selfless, smart young woman” whose life had just begun.

She said Dugay’s brother, who was 14 at the time of her death, has been struggling with “sleeping, eating and living” for the past seven years and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“He can’t leave the house without the fear of dying. His panic attacks would become so severe... He would scream and cry, holding his chest, unable to breath, his hands and feet cramping from this panic, begging me not to let him die,” she said.

DesRoches said her son has required therapy, medication, tutoring, homeschooling and caregivers, as he cannot be left alone for extended periods.

“You didn’t just take Hailey’s life that night, you took the last of his childhood from him. You robbed us of all ever feeling safe again.”

The emergency nurse of more than two decades said receiving the call at the end of her shift — the kind of call she has had to make to other families herself — was terrifying.

She said when she rushed to the Teulon Hospital and saw EMS and RCMP setting up space for STARS Air Ambulance to land, she realized “this was worse than any nightmare.”

“Every time we have a young woman brought into the emergency room, I see her — laying there lifeless.”

‘Things got out of hand’

Comber, who has been in custody since August 2019, briefly addressed court, saying that “things got out of hand” that night and no one should have gotten hurt. He said he would not hesitate “for one single second” to trade places with Dugay if he could.

Court also heard testimony about what Mainella described as a “pattern of impulsive acts with poor judgement” with relatively serious consequences.

Months after his arrest, Comber escaped Headingley Correctional Institution after threatening a delivery driver with an X-Acto knife and driving through the gate. A slow-speed pursuit ensued — a vehicle governor capping the delivery truck to 80 km/h — before the vehicle ended up in a ditch and Comber surrendered to police.

Glazer, however, described the incident as a “panic attack,” saying his client fled out of fear for his 17-month-old son’s wellbeing, who was undergoing lung surgery.

He added that his client had no adult criminal record until the 2022 conviction, and that for nine months following the shooting, Comber was working and acting as a law-abiding citizen while raising his twin boys. Glazer said his client was victimized by what he calls a wrongful conviction for murder.

Paluk was originally charged with second-degree murder in connection with Dugay’s death, but ballistics testing confirmed the fatal shot came from Comber’s rifle, not his.

The panel reserved its decision, with a written ruling to be released at a later date.

‘Affront to my daughter’s memory’

DesRoches called it “horrible” to still be caught up in the courts almost eight years after her daughter’s death.

“You continuously have this band-aid that keeps getting ripped off, and every time you feel like you’re able to heal and breathe a little bit, it just comes back again.”

She said she was “heartbroken and devastated” by the Court of Appeal’s decision to reduce the charge to manslaughter — an outcome she described as completely unexpected.

The ruling, she said, feels like an “affront to my daughter’s memory and the gravity of the loss we have endured,” and sends a “troubling message about accountability in the face of a tragedy.”

“The judges may state that he caused her death, but the reduction of the charge undermines the seriousness of that action and the intent that should accompany such a grave consequence.”

In 2022, DesRoches founded Hailey’s Way Inc., a charitable organization in her daughter’s memory dedicated to supporting youth through programs and funding that build confidence and develop essential life skills.

“We will continue to advocate for justice and honour Hailey’s memory, no matter how disheartening this outcome may be,” she said. “Her loss is something we will carry forever.”