A Wyoming judge has rejected a plea deal that would have given a Riverton man 18 to 20 years in prison for shooting a 24-year-old woman in the face and leaving their 5-year-old daughter alone in the motel room with her dead mother.
Instead, Sterling Louis Black Jr., 25, could once again face a second-degree murder trial in the March 7 death of Angelina Rose Bell — a possibility that brings relief to Bell’s father.
“I wanted the judge to understand that my daughter's life wasn't worth any number, especially 18-20 years,” Byron Bell told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. “I believe the more years her killer spends behind bars the better.”
District Court Judge Jason Conder rejected the binding plea agreement during a sentencing hearing Thursday in Lander.
Under the deal, Black had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and child endangerment rather than go to trial on the original second-degree murder charge.
This was a binding agreement, meaning that a judge can't simply impose whatever sentence they believe is appropriate. Conder had to either accept the negotiated sentence as written or reject the deal altogether.
Bell described the agreement as the “deal of the century” for the man accused of killing his daughter.
“There is no time that will ever be satisfying for her family,” he said. “But we would like some justice.
“Maybe one day he'll get to walk around again, but I want to make sure the most of his life was spent locked up and that I'm not around to see that day.”
‘There’s Always That Doubt’
Bell said he went into Thursday’s hearing fairly confident Conder would reject the deal.
Part of that confidence came from Black's "lack of emotion" and "the way he talked" in court, he said.
"But there's always that doubt because you never know what’s going to happen in a courtroom,” Bell said.
Conder's written order, issued Friday, makes clear why the structure of the agreement mattered.
Had he accepted it, Conder would have been locked into the negotiated outcome rather than being free to impose a different sentence after considering Black's plea and the circumstances of the case.
In a court order issued after the hearing, Conder wrote that the court was ‘unwilling to accept and impose the agreed upon outcome required by the binding plea agreement.’
That puts back into play the charge Black originally faced: Second-degree murder, and it takes the case back toward the horrifying morning that brought police to Room 4 of the Ol' Wyoming Motel in Riverton.
'A Wonderful Mother'
“My daughter was a loving and caring person and especially and very proud mother,” Bell said. “She was truly a wonderful mother and very proud of her daughter.”
“She always carried a smile and greeted everyone with love.”
Angelina wasn't simply the 24-year-old woman whose name appears throughout a murder case, her father said.
“She would always check in with me and make sure I was OK and doing good,” Bell said. “She would always be one of the first people to wish me a Happy Birthday, Father's Day, Merry Christmas or whatever was going on.”
Those ordinary calls and messages have become some of the things he misses most.
“I just had my 50th birthday and it was the hardest one because she wasn't there,” he said. “Everything is hard nowadays.”
Bell said he hasn't allowed the enormity of his daughter's death to sink in yet. Not fully.
“I want to fight for her and if I let it sink in, I don't know what will happen with me,” he said. “Grief is hard.”
'Her Mother Would Be Very Proud'
Bell said some of the deepest hurt comes from losing the future he had pictured — growing older alongside his daughter and watching her and her “sisters,” the cousins she grew up close to, raise their children together.
“I had so many visions of her bringing my grandchildren to me to visit and the holidays we'd spend together,” he said.
“Now all of that is gone and all we have are our memories of her and they hurt right now,” Bell said. “Maybe one day we can smile with a memory of her but that is a long ways away.
“No parent should have to feel this pain and I don't wish it upon anyone. My daughter was a very special person to so many!”
Bell said his granddaughter is doing well living with her grandmother and attending school.
Her grandmother is making sure she continues to remember Angelina.
“Her mother would be very proud of her,” Bell said.
One day, he knows, his granddaughter will be old enough to understand more about why her mother isn't there.
“One day she'll understand what happened,” he said.
‘Mommy’s Dead’
Just before 7 a.m. March 7, Riverton police were dispatched to the motel after someone called to report that a little girl had found her mother and wasn't sure whether she was conscious.
An affidavit of probable cause said the caller reported that there was “lots of blood."
Officer Brandon Brookover entered the motel room and found Bell lying on her right side on the bathroom floor.
Blood was pooling beneath her head. She showed no signs of life.
A spent 9mm casing was in the toilet bowl.
Another officer, Scott Christoffersen, spoke with the little girl, said the affidavit.
“Momma's in my bathroom,” she told him.
The girl was taken to the police department, where tribal Department of Family Services personnel met her. Before she was released to relatives, however, she made a series of statements to a victim witness coordinator.
“Daddy went for a walk.”
“Mommy has blood on her.”
“Daddy was mad at Mommy.”
And: “Mommy's dead.”
No Exit Wound
Inside the motel room, Riverton Police Detective Peter McCall found a plastic gun case for an SAR 9mm semiautomatic handgun. There were two empty magazines inside the case, but the gun itself was gone, the affidavit said.
When investigators moved Bell onto her back, McCall saw what appeared to be a bullet entrance wound near the bridge of her nose and right eye.
There was stippling — the tiny abrasions caused when particles of gunpowder strike the skin — across a large portion of her face, including her nose, forehead, cheek and around both eyes.
McCall concluded from the stippling and absence of obvious gas burns that the gun had been fired from somewhere between several inches and 2 feet from Bell's face.
He also noted that Bell did not have the tearing injuries typically associated with a contact gunshot wound.
Investigators found a fired bullet on the bathroom floor near the vanity. There was no exit wound, McCall wrote.
The affidavit also says motel surveillance showed Bell, Black and their daughter arriving at the room at about 11 p.m. the previous night.
Black left at about 2:41 a.m., later returned and then left again at about 5:21 a.m.
Motel staff told investigators Black had been renting the room since Feb. 12. None of the neighboring guests reported hearing a gunshot or an argument.
Police contacted multiple members of Bell's family. McCall wrote that they gave consistent accounts of abuse between the couple beginning in late December or early January. Bell told relatives on multiple occasions that Black hit her, and several relatives knew he had a gun.
Found In A Trailer
Black wasn't at the motel when police arrived.
At about 4:08 that afternoon — roughly nine hours after Bell was found — the Fremont County Sheriff's Office notified Riverton police that Black was turning himself in.
His father later told investigators he had found Black in an abandoned trailer on his property and urged his son to “do what is right.”
Black's father had him put the gun into a plastic bag so he wouldn't have to touch it himself, then turned it over to law enforcement, according to the affidavit.
Police said it was a black SAR 9mm semiautomatic handgun with an empty magazine. Its serial number matched the number on the empty gun case investigators found in the motel room.
When Black was booked, McCall noted no injuries on his body other than a small cut on his left thumb.
About 12 hours after Bell was believed to have been shot, Black registered a 0.06% breath-alcohol reading, said the affidavit.
Black was charged with second-degree murder and initially pleaded not guilty.
Back Toward Trial
Black notified the court Aug. 11 that he and the state were negotiating a resolution, and a written plea agreement followed the next day.
Black would plead guilty to manslaughter and child endangerment. The agreed-upon sentence was 18 to 20 years on the manslaughter count and another year in jail for child endangerment, served consecutively.
Conder rejected the agreement Thursday, leaving the parties to decide where they will go from here.
Cowboy State Daily reached out to Black’s defense attorney, Zachary Mahlum, for comment Monday but did not receive a response before publication.
Conder's order permits prosecutors to proceed on the original second-degree murder charge and permits Black to withdraw the guilty pleas he entered under the rejected agreement.
Conder gave both sides until Oct. 30 to file status reports, motions or other pleadings explaining their positions on a trial and/or withdrawal of the guilty pleas. Each side will have another 10 days to respond to filings from the other.
Meanwhile, the judge has already put a date on the calendar.
Black's second-degree murder trial is scheduled for Jan. 25, 2027.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
