Phillip Stewart

A Bowling Green woman was placed on probation for five years Tuesday afternoon for her role in the 2021 death of a man in a pellet gun shooting.

Warren Circuit Judge John Grise imposed the sentence on Alison Hargis, 34, who had earlier pleaded guilty to a count of second-degree manslaughter in connection with the death of Phillip “Flip” Stewart, 31, of Bowling Green.

Stewart was found unresponsive on July 24, 2021, in the parking lot outside a set of apartments on Cherry Way.

Authorities later learned that Stewart had been shot multiple times with a pellet gun by Hargis, with the lethal wound caused by a pellet that penetrated his pericardium, a fluid-filled sac surrounding the heart.

Hargis emerged as a suspect and was arrested the next day by the Bowling Green Police Department.

A grand jury indicted Hargis on a murder charge, and she spent nearly two years in jail while the criminal case was pending, but she pleaded guilty in January to a lesser count of second-degree manslaughter, which carries a statutory penalty range of 5-10 years in prison.

Grise said at Tuesday’s sentencing that, had Hargis taken the murder case to trial, it was “very possible” she could have been acquitted outright based on her assertion that she acted in self-defense.

At a sentencing bench trial in February, Hargis testified that she shot Stewart multiple times from her doorway after overhearing him and his girlfriend, Wendy Medina, get into an argument in the parking lot.

Stewart reportedly threatened to have Medina beat up Hargis if she shot him again, and Hargis said she went back into her apartment.

Minutes later, Hargis said she opened her door and Stewart attempted to force his way inside, leading Hargis to fire another round, which an autopsy determined was the lethal shot.

Hargis said she then left the apartment and walked toward Woodford Street after seeing Stewart lying in the parking lot, admitting to not notifying anyone about the final shot at her doorway or seeking assistance for Stewart, a circumstance that provided the basis for her guilty plea to second-degree manslaughter.

“I believe at trial, if the case had gone to a trial before a jury, that she would have had a very substantial, if not compelling, argument for self-defense,” Grise said in pronouncing the sentence, noting prior testimony from Stewart’s family that indicated he was in active addiction and suffering from a mental illness and that methamphetamine was present in Stewart’s system at his autopsy.

Hargis was credited with 379 days of jail time served on the manslaughter charge while her case was pending, and Grise said she would have become eligible for parole “very soon” after being taken into state custody if she were imprisoned.

Hargis faces a seven-year prison sentence if she has been found to have violated her probation and her probation is revoked by the court.

Attorney Deidre Bowen of the Department of Public Advocacy argued for probation for Hargis, saying that since she was released on bond last year from jail that she has entered a program for women recovering from addiction and has maintained her sobriety and obtained work at a factory.

“She has proven that she can be a productive citizen,” Bowen said.

Bowen said that Hargis has expressed “a lot of remorse” for her actions, but also maintained that she was legally justified in “protecting herself from a dangerous man.”

“We believe she had legal justification for her actions, but even with that, she still did not mean to hurt anyone, she never thought a BB gun would kill anyone,” Bowen said. “It was never her intended result to kill anyone. It wasn’t even anything she considered would happen when she shot him with a BB gun.”

Warren County Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Mike Lindsey sought the maximum 10-year sentence for Hargis, pointing back to prior testimony from Medina that she did not feel she was in danger during her argument with Stewart and did not require Hargis to intervene.

Lindsey also noted that, while Hargis has been involved in an addiction recovery program, she did not testify that drug use was a factor in the shooting.

“This is the type of thing that we do not need to be happening in Warren County, that’s clear,” Lindsey said in court. “Based on the evidence adduced at the bench trial, there really wasn’t any justification for this.”