Family claims miscarriage of justice following court ruling on crash that killed two-young-girl

A Manitoba family claims they’ve been subjected to a miscarriage of justice after a man charged in a crash that killed two young girls was found not guilty. The childrens’ family saying they were further victimised after the man boasted about the ruling on social media.

“It makes no sense whatsoever,” said Gaylene Dutchyshen, the grandmother of the two girls. “When she declared a non-guilty verdict, the court just erupted. It was just chaos in there, actually.”

The not-guilty verdict comes roughly four years after the 2019 crash that killed 6-year-old Oksana Dutchyshen and 4-year-old Quinn Dutchyshen, and resulted in Jack Winters, from the Rural Municipality of Dauphin, being charged with a list of offences, including two counts of impaired driving causing death.

Court of Kings Bench Justice Sandra Zinchuk issued an oral decision on the matter this week, with the Winnipeg Free Press reporting the judge found there was reasonable doubt that Winters was driving the vehicle involved in the crash.

A verdict Oksana and Quinn’s grandmother and her family cannot accept.

“The family is devastated.”

While Winters has been found innocent, the family believes he was behind the wheel of the vehicle involved. Despite his claim otherwise, there was another man in the truck with Winters during the crash who told first responders he was driving.

However, Jeffrey Thompson died as a result of an alleged homicide in 2020, and family say they feel he was too injured to give a statement.

They also say the fact that DNA from Winters on the driver-side airbag – not Thompson – was an important piece of evidence the judge did not give enough weight to, saying the entire trial felt “sketchy.”

“They dragged this out, it’s going to be four years. And we just thought we’d get some closure finally and it hasn’t come.”

Dutchyshen says the devastation they felt throughout the proceedings, was amplified when Winters posted to social media a selfie, alongside the phrase “All I do is win baby. Victory.”

“We have to continue to live without Oksana and Quinn and we have to find some way to go free and then for him to sort of flaunt his freedom, it’s just extremely painful.”

Jonathan Pinx, who represented Winters, said his client made a mistake in making the post, and claims the man was documenting his life on social media as many people do, but said he is remorseful and never meant to cause the family any harm with the now deleted post.

But Dutchyshen does not believe it, nor does victims advocate Karen Wiebe, with the Manitoba Organization for Victim Assistance or MOVA.

“If he’s sorry about anything, he’s sorry he got caught posting it. Let’s be honest, he didn’t take it down because he felt any remorse, because if he felt any remorse, he wouldn’t have put it up there in the first place,” said Wiebe.

Wiebe says all too often family members are subjected to revictimization as they go through the court process, calling both Winters behaviour post trial and the length it took to get a verdict reprehensible.

“This person is not 15-years-old. Doesn’t he know better than that? Shouldn’t we all know better than that. We should know better than to push someone’s face into their sorrow and into their grief – that family is suffering.”

She wants to see the courts examine whether or not Winters may be subjected to punishment for his behaviour, which she says may have violated Manitoba’s Victims’ Bill of Rights.

“It might be worth something to pursue and to look at is there a way they could be charged under the victims bill of rights, or maybe the Victims Bill of Rights need to be tweaked a bit, so it is going to include people who offend – and hurt – people who are already hurt.”