Before Debbie Dehoyos spoke in court Thursday, she propped up two framed photos of her 21-year-old daughter, who was a mother of three young children and seven weeks pregnant when she was fatally shot in St. Paul.

In March, Gabriella Dehoyos was riding in the back seat of her boyfriend’s car with her children in the city’s Summit-University neighborhood when a single shot fired by Paul Dwayne Harris struck her in the back of the head. Her fetus also later died at the hospital.

Gabriella Dehoyos (Courtesy photo)

“I just want everybody to take a last look at my daughter,” Dehoyos said in the Ramsey County courtroom, “because this is all we have now … pictures, videos and her children. We are never again going to hear laughter.”

Harris, 24, pleaded guilty in September to second-degree murder while committing a drive-by shooting. He received a 38½-year prison sentence Thursday, which was the top-of-the-box term he could have received under state sentencing guidelines.

Dehoyos asked Harris why he fired into the car. “Did you always have a gun on you just in case you came into contact with people you didn’t like, just to shoot them?” she said. “You took a very special person away from us.”

Harris and Gabriella Dehoyos, of St. Paul, did not know each other before the March 13 shooting. Her boyfriend, Demetrius Bennett, told police he only knew Harris by his street name of “Pauly P.”

Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Andrew Johnson asked Judge Maria Mitchell for an upward departure to a 40-year prison term, noting that Dehoyos’ children, who were ages 3, 2 and 11 months old at the time, were in the car. One of the children was covered with her mother’s blood, according to the criminal charges, but the kids were uninjured.

Johnson said Harris has implied that he acted in self-defense in the shooting. Johnson then played in court a video from a traffic camera that showed Harris and Bennett driving in opposite directions before the shot was fired and “clearly shows this was not in any way self-defense,” he said. “This was just a cold-blooded murder.”

Intersection shot

According to the criminal complaint, a distraught Bennett pulled up to Regions Hospital’s emergency room about 5 p.m. Dehoyos 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 when a silver Ford sedan exited from Interstate 94. He recognized the driver and knew him by his street name.

Paul Dwayne Harris (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

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.

“I looked over at her and … I knew something was wrong,” Bennett, 25, said in court Thursday. He paused and sobbed.

“I was on top of her, kissing her … my tears were dropping on her face,” he continued. “My exact words were, ‘Baby … stay with me, please.’”

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 the area of the shooting at the time.

Officers took Harris into custody in Jordan in Scott County three days later. He told police that he didn’t know anything about the shooting.

Harris was previously convicted twice for illegal possession of a firearm. 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.

Facebook posts

In addition to the traffic camera video, Johnson introduced other exhibits that the judge gave the OK to be part of the sentencing hearing.

One was a recording of an April 6 jail telephone call that Harris had with a friend. Earlier that day, Johnson said, a “very close friend” of Harris, Jadonn Taylor, was shot to death in the parking lot of the Target on Suburban Avenue, just south of Interstate 94, in St. Paul.

The murder charges against the alleged shooter, Thomas Derek Coleman, say a tipster told police that Taylor’s killing was retaliation for Dehoyos’ homicide.

In the jail telephone call, Harris instructed his friend to make a post on Harris’ Facebook page. “Say it was two for one and then put … um, allegedly. And say, ya’ll still not even,” Harris said in the jail call recording.

Johnson then showed in court a Facebook post that was written that day as Harris had instructed.

“And, as the court knows, Gabby was pregnant when she was killed,” Johnson said. “So in the defendant’s mind, he’s still up, because he killed two people. And, to me, that shows a complete lack of remorse on his part. Maybe he regrets killing the wrong person, but he doesn’t regret the killing.”

Johnson then played part of another jail call recording between Harris and a friend on Sept. 22. In it, Harris said that March 13 was “JB’s birthday … and when I seen him, somebody had to go.”

Johnson said Harris’ Facebook page showed that Harris was referring to John Broyles, his friend who was shot to death on University Avenue in St. Paul in 2016. The 17-year-old’s birthday was March, 13, 1998, Johnson said, “so when (Harris) said it was JB’s birthday and somebody had to die, that’s what he was talking about.”

When Mitchell asked Harris if he wanted to address the court, his attorney, Michael Padden said: “Your honor, my client has instructed me that he’s waiving his right to allocution.”

Mitchell told Harris she decided that his sentence would fall within the state guidelines because “you accepted responsibility in the sense that you have pleaded guilty and you have not dragged out the process of a trial in this matter.”

She told Harris that she hopes he “takes advantage of prison programs on violence prevention to make your life better. And stop thinking about the things that are causing grief and harm. The fact that you’re still posting things on Facebook while you’re in custody leaves me to believe that you still think that world is of value to you.”

When the hearing was over and family members were filing out of the courtroom, an argument began between people on either side of the courtroom gallery. It turned into a physical fight between two women that spilled outside the courtroom, prompting the judge to order people not to leave. It was broken up by several Ramsey County sheriff’s deputies.

‘Life sentence without Gabriella’

Dehoyos “brought light into every room that she walked into,” her sister Charlotte Parayno said in court. “I can still hear her funny laughs. I can still feel her annoying pinches.”

For holidays, Dehoyos dressed her children in the “cutest outfits and took the cutest pictures,” Parayno said. “Gabby wasn’t just a mom, she was the mom. And when it came to her children, her limits were endless.”

Dehoyos’ father, Andrew Wood, said the family “has to live the life sentence without Gabriella, and it really should be Paul. You were out to kill that day.”

Debbie Dehoyos recalled how excited Gabriella was planning her youngest daughter’s first birthday party. She was killed a week before her daughter’s birthday.

“I would never wish this upon my worst enemy,” Dehoyos said. “This is a nightmare that I have to die with. But it’s OK, because I feel her every day and I know she’s with me and she’s giving us all the strength to go on.”

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