3 October 2023
Debbie Dehoyos says the admission of guilt by the man who killed her pregnant daughter in March “hasn’t really hit me yet.”
She says it will likely come at next month’s sentencing of Paul Dwayne Harris, who pleaded guilty Sept. 21 to second-degree murder while committing a drive-by shooting in the death of Gabriella Dehoyos, a mother of three young children and who was seven weeks pregnant. Her fetus also later died at the hospital.
Gabriella Dehoyos (Courtesy photo)
The 21-year-old, of St. Paul, was riding in her boyfriend’s car with her children in the city’s Summit-University neighborhood when a single shot fired by Harris struck her in the back of the head.
“For me, for (the plea) to sink in, I think it’s going to take being in court and seeing this person face to face and telling him how we feel,” Dehoyos said in an interview. “And asking him, Why? Why did you have to do it that day? Why did you even have to have a gun in your car? Why? You didn’t even care who you hit.”
One of Dehoyos’ children was covered with her mother’s blood, but the kids were uninjured, as was Dehoyos’ boyfriend and another man in the vehicle, the charges said.
Dehoyos and her boyfriend, Demetrius Bennett, found out they were expecting their second child together a month before the killing, her mother said.
“It’s all still so surreal,” she said of the March 13 killing. “To be honest, I feel like my daughter is just traveling, that she is going to come home and I will hear her run up the steps and say, ‘Mom, what are you doing?’ What did you cook?’ So that’s how I feel right now.”
Harris, 24, of St. Paul, entered the plea in Ramsey County District Court four days before a jury trial was scheduled to begin. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to dismiss two other charges filed against him in the case: second-degree assault and possession of a gun by an ineligible person.
Prosecutors plan to ask a judge to hand down an aggravated sentence of 40 years in prison. Sentencing is set for Nov. 2.
Paul Dwayne Harris (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
The shooting
According to the criminal complaint, Gabriella Dehoyos’ distraught boyfriend pulled up to Regions Hospital’s emergency room about 5 p.m. She was immediately taken into surgery and it was determined she had no detectable brain activity. She was pronounced dead the next day.
Bennett told investigators he was driving west on St. Anthony Avenue in his Kia Rondo hatchback when a silver Ford sedan exited from Interstate 94. He recognized the driver and knew him by his street name.
While at the stoplight at St. Anthony Avenue and Marion Street, Bennett looked toward the sedan and saw the driver was pointing a handgun in his direction. He ducked down and yanked the steering wheel to the left, turning onto Marion. He heard the back passenger window shatter and knew the man had fired. A traffic camera corroborated what he told police.
Police determined that the suspect with the street name of “Pauly P” was Harris. Cellphone records showed a phone connected to Harris was traveling in St. Paul in the area of the shooting at the time, the complaint said.
Officers took Harris into custody in Jordan in Scott County on March 16. He told police that he didn’t know anything about the shooting.
Harris has been convicted two times of illegal possession of a firearm, Minnesota court records show. The incidents were in 2016 and 2018. He is not allowed to possess firearms because he pleaded guilty to first-degree burglary when he was 16.
Harris was released from prison in November 2021 on the latest conviction and was under the supervision of Ramsey County Community Corrections at the time of the murder.
Bennett said in an interview last week he knew Harris from his past, that he would see him at the El Rio Recreation Center on St. Paul’s West Side.
“I stopped living on the West Side in 2012, and I hadn’t seen him since,” Bennet, 24, said. “Once I met Gabby and I found out we were having our first kid, I’ve been a family man. Debbie can tell you that. And (the traffic camera) didn’t show me pulling over, or throwing out a gun.”
A mother’s grief
Dehoyos said her daughter FaceTimed her about five minutes before the shooting. She was at work and didn’t pick up.
“That’s the thing that’s going to bother me until I die,” she said. “I should have picked up that phone.”
Dehoyos now finds herself caring for Gabby’s children, who are now ages 1, 3 and 4.
“(Harris) took a mom away from three young children who are not even going to know their mother’s touch, her voice hardly,” she said. “She should be here for their milestones, not me. She should be here getting them ready for school and daycare. She should experience that as a mother.”
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