Accused in Gimli-area fatal shooting has history as shooting victim By: Bill Redekop  Posted: 7:00 PM CST Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018 Last Modified: 3:27 PM CST Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018 Updates

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This article was published 19/11/2018 (2227 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The man accused of fatally shooting a 20-year-old woman on a rural road west of Gimli Saturday night was on the opposite end of a less serious road shooting eight years earlier.

Jesse Paluk was walking home from Teulon Collegiate on Highway 17 back in 2010 when he and a friend were shot at and bruised by plastic pellets from an air rifle.

Three students, aged 15 and 16, drove up and began shooting at the then 14-year-old Paluk. He and his friend were struck in the back, arms, leg and one plastic pellet hit Paluk in the face near an eye.

The incident was characterized as bullying and made news headlines.

Paluk, 23, is now charged with second-degree murder in the death of Hailey Dugay. Paluk is alleged to have opened fire on three vehicles travelling along Provincial Road 231, between Fraserwood and Gimli, at around 11:30 p.m. Dugay, who worked at a daycare, was fatally wounded.

In the bullying incident in 2010, Paluk’s father, Douglas, complained to media that Teulon Collegiate wasn’t doing enough to protect students from bullying.

Two of the three students in the car were reportedly expelled from school over the incident. However, RCMP did not lay charges, noting that the plastic gun used in the incident can be bought at sporting goods stores and is not considered a firearm.

Douglas Paluk died last year of terminal illness at the age of 50.

Jesse Paluk’s lone conviction as an adult was for dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily harm in 2016. He was handed a 90-day intermittent jail sentence, to be served on weekends. His license was also suspended for 18 months.

Paluk was convicted after he flipped his truck on Highway 17. He had no driver’s licence, no car insurance, and bald tires. He swerved off an on-ramp into a ditch and “completely pancaked” the truck, provincial court Judge Murray Thompson said as he handed down the sentence.

Several passengers were in the truck but luckily only one was hurt. He was off work for three months recovering from a shoulder injury.

“He already is someone who doesn’t have a lot of friends, and that was a friendship that he has all but lost as a result of his conduct that day,” Paluk’s defence lawyer, Gerri Wiebe, told court at the time. She asked the judge to spare Paluk jail time because of his history with ADHD and the depression he suffered as a result of his father’s death, which transpired after the truck crash.

At the time, Paluk worked at a quarry pit for a construction company and was responsible for all of the maintenance and yard work at his family’s 80-acre farmhouse outside Teulon, the court heard.

The shooting with a firearm last Saturday was preceded by a fight at a Fraserwood bar, 80 kilometres north of Winnipeg. The fight ended with everyone ejected. Dugay and her boyfriend, Branden Harasymko, were not part of the skirmish, Branden’s father, Jerry, said.

Paluk allegedly fired from the road at three vehicles all belonging to bar patrons that night at the same location on PR 231. Dugay was a passenger in her boyfriend’s truck when it was struck by gunfire.

The couple were driving to a house party when they came upon a man holding a rifle, standing on the road beside a car, Jerry Harasymko said.

“Branden stopped and said, ‘Is there a problem here?’ and (the man) told him to keep on driving,” Harasymko said. “He did, and all of a sudden, he heard shots being fired.”

Dugay, seated in the rear passenger seat, was shot.

Paluk, from the Teulon area, has been charged with second-degree murder and an additional seven counts each of attempted murder and discharging a firearm with intent to wound, and three counts each of reckless discharge of a firearm and assault with a weapon.

He was scheduled in bail court on Tuesday but did not appear. He will have to make a bail application in front of a Queen’s Bench Justice because of the seriousness of the charges.

The case will be back on Wednesday’s bail docket but it’s expected to be adjourned again.

with files from Katie May

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca