Victim’s family objects to plea deal in murder case
Editor's note: This article contains descriptions of fatal violence and may be disturbing to some readers.
RIVERTON — After hiding out in an abandoned trailer, Sterling Black Jr. allegedly handed over the gun to his father and turned himself in.
It was just hours after he'd shot Angelina Rose Bell, the mother of his five-year-old child, in the face, then left the little girl with her dead mother's body in a Riverton hotel room, according to prosecutors.
The child eventually wandered outside. She told people her mother wouldn't wake up, and there was lots of blood, court documents describe.
Originally facing 20 years minimum with a maximum of life in prison, Black was last week offered a deal: Plead guilty to manslaughter and child endangerment and spend a year in county jail followed by an 18-20 year prison sentence, barely over the minimum sentence of his original, second-degree murder charge.
Friends and family members sobbed. They objected.
District Court Judge Jason Conder didn't mince words.
"This is not my plea agreement," the judge said, repeatedly adding that he wouldn't agree to it without some substantial new information about the case.
And as the hearing played out Thursday, Conder's criticism escalated.
After Black attempted to offer a guilty plea to the new manslaughter charge and simply stated he didn't know the gun was loaded and didn't mean to fatally shoot his girlfriend and the mother of his child, Conder objected, calling the legal "factual basis" needed to be established for the deal "short, shrift, cutting corners."
Throughout Thursday's change of plea hearing when Fremont County prosecutors' deal was presented, the judge warned he wouldn't accept the deal without some serious, new information.
"That isn't a factual basis that I think is worthy of the benefit received," Conder scolded after Black's first attempt at a brief narrative of the fatal shooting. "I will bluntly tell you: I was expecting more … He's been given the deal of the century."
Turning to Tim Hancock, Riverton mayor and prosecutor in the case, Conder added: "I don't know if you want to stand by your deal" and provide more information to justify it, he asked.
More details, the judge said, are needed to consider such a substantial departure from the original second-degree murder charge and penalty.
Hancock promised those details would come. He suggested that Black's public defender huddle with his client and try again, and that the county attorney's office could share more at a scheduled sentencing hearing this fall.
Conder, along with more than a dozen of Bell's friends and family members seated in the courtroom, expressed serious concerns about the deal.
The case
Court documents describe a harrowing scene: A five-year-old girl who wandered out of her parents' room at The 'Ol Wyoming hotel in Riverton, reporting she couldn't wake up her mother.
Police arrived and found Angelina, a 24-year-old mother, who had been fatally shot in the face in the bathroom.
Her daughter, after being transported to the Riverton Police Department and briefly assisted by Tribal Department of Family Services staff, then ushered into family care, told investigators that her dad, Black, had been mad at her mom, court documents report.
"Daddy was mad at Mommy," the girl reportedly told investigators, adding that daddy had gone for a walk, that "mommy has blood on her."
And then, "Mommy's dead."
Inside the hotel room where the family had been living for about a month, investigators discovered a spent 9mm bullet casing on the toilet and a plastic firearms case for an SAR 9mm semiautomatic handgun on the TV stand with two empty magazines but no gun, according to the affidavit.
Investigators estimated the gun was between several inches and two feet from Bell's face when it was fired, court documents state.
Riverton Police Detective Peter McCall noted in the affidavit signs of drug and alcohol use in the bathroom and a 2017 Mitsubishi Outlander registered to Bell parked outside the room. McCall then reportedly reviewed motel surveillance video which showed the family arriving at the motel room at about 11 p.m. the evening before, then Black leaving at around 2:41 a.m. that morning; he reportedly returned to the room at an unknown time, then left again at 5:21 a.m.
Motel staff told investigators they had seen signs the couple drank alcohol, and at least one time observed Bell with a black eye; Bell's family members all "provided consistent statements about abuse between [Black] and [Bell]," the affidavit says, adding that the alleged abuse began in late December 2025 or early January 2026. Family members said Bell had told them on multiple occasions that Black had hit her, and several were aware that he owned a gun, court documents describe.
As officers investigated the scene, Black's father arrived, according to the affidavit, explaining that the family lived in the motel room but not how he had been made aware of the fatal shooting.
Black's father reportedly discovered his son in an abandoned trailer on his property, where he told him to "do what is right" and convinced Black to surrender the gun, which was placed into a plastic bag and given to police. Black turned himself in at the Fremont County Sheriff's Office at just after 4 p.m. that day, where he was arrested on an unrelated warrant and later charged with second-degree murder.
At the jail, hours after the alleged fatal shooting, Black submitted to a breath test, which reportedly measured his blood alcohol content at .06%.
The hearing
Conder laid out the lesser charge of manslaughter and the potential 18-20 year sentence and advised Black and the attorneys that if he rejects the plea agreement, the state could pursue the original second-degree murder charge at trial.
From the start, Conder voiced skepticism of the deal.
"At some point, someone's going to have to explain themselves why I should accept this," he advised.
"I'm guilty because … I recklessly killed my girlfriend," Black said during his first attempt at offering a narrative and pleading guilty under the lesser charges. He described an argument before the shooting as Bell's family members sobbed.
"After I took the gun away from her I didn't check that the gun was loaded and I pointed it at her and pulled the trigger," he said, adding he didn't intend to kill her or harm her.
For the second new charge – child endangerment – Black simply stated he left his five-year-old child alone at the hotel.
Conder immediately advised that he expected more and that he wouldn't accept the plea agreement based on the story offered; at one point, he suggested the Wyoming Supreme Court may ultimately determine whether the factual basis was sufficient.
Public defender Zach Mahlum, who is representing Black, and Hancock both promised that the judge would learn more at the sentencing hearing. That's when the judge is also expected to review a confidential presentencing report, which outlines a defendant's background.
I started out saying I was skeptical, Conder responded.
"There's no smoke and mirrors here," he said. "You're hearing from me where I stand."
Following Black's initial sparse explanation, Mahlum and Hancock huddled in the courtroom, Mahlum visited with Black, and Black tried again to meet the judge’s expectations for the "factual basis" for the deal.
"On March 7, 2026, me and my girlfriend were drinking, like, all night," Black began.
He said the couple argued over whether they should have brought their daughter to the hospital because she was ill, but that they couldn't since they'd been drinking and Black had an interlock alcohol-breath reader affixed to his vehicle. Black claimed that Angelina was suicidal that night and he grabbed the gun from her.
A weeping family member scoffed, stood up, and walked out of the courtroom.
Black claimed there were no bullets in the magazine but he failed to check the chamber, then pulled the trigger.
"He's lying. Why can't you – " another family member exclaimed.
"This is obviously a very difficult thing for my client to say," Mahlum told the judge, again offering assurance that Conder would hear more factual basis information at sentencing.
Conder went over the deadlines for the presentencing report and sentencing hearing schedule, adding, "I have a list of questions I would expect to be answered with [the] truth."
The deal
Had a plea deal not been struck, attorneys in the case were up against pretrial deadlines that would have required multiple filings laying out evidence and proposed arguments. Instead, what was scheduled as a pretrial conference was switched to a change of plea hearing, and the deal was laid out on the table.
Hancock was seen shortly before the hearing began, leaned over and whispering to Angelina's father, Byron Bell. He mentioned the plea agreement, adding that they had interviewed Black's brother and his statements were "consistent."
When asked by Conder whether the family had been made aware of the proposed plea agreement, Hancock said yes, the family had been told, but he stated he wasn't sure they all agreed with it.
They didn't.
"I stood up and told him, I'm not OK with it," Angelina's father Byron said in an interview about his communication with prosecutors on the deal before the hearing.
He was standing with family and friends outside the courthouse moments after the hearing. A courthouse security guard advised the family that they wouldn't walk Black outside on his way to jail if Angelina's family were still gathered there.
He encouraged them to move along, adding, "I'm just doing my job."
"We want it to go to trial," Byron said after the family relocated to the lawn outside the courthouse. "Eighteen to 20 [years] is a slap in the face … At the end of it he told us he might go with the plea deal without our consent."
Byron said prosecutors told the family they were concerned about adding another trial to the calendar and mentioned another second-degree murder case.
That, he said, should not be a factor in his family getting justice for Angelina.
"I know a jury would find him guilty, for 20 to life. We want him to answer for more. He was abusing her before this," Byron said. "I'm not happy at all. I pray the judge rejects [the plea deal]. That's what I pray."
MMIR 307 advocate Nicole Wagon stood alongside the family, explaining the importance of filling out victim impact statements for the judge to read before the scheduled October sentencing hearing, when Conder is expected to decide whether to approve of the lesser charge and plea agreement. She offered encouragement.
"The hope and the joy that's going to keep you guys going is [Angelina's daughter]," Wagon shared.
Black's sentencing hearing is scheduled for Oct. 22.
This story was published on August 15, 2026.
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