A Gulfport man who was barreling down Highway 49 in a Ford F-250 truck when he fatally struck a pedestrian in a Jan. 31, 2022, hit-and-run crash is headed to prison for 13 years.

Mickel Anthony Stewart, 26, was speeding down Highway 49 just after 3 a.m. on Jan. 31, 2022, when he fatally struck Princess Ann Phillips, 33, of Gulfport. Stewart said he knew he had hit something and stopped further down the highway but said he never saw the young woman’s body lying in the road.

Stewart took off from there, stopped on a street in Biloxi, and removed the damaged grill from the front of his truck, Harrison County Assistant District Attorney Haley Broom said. Gulfport police obtained camera footage from the areas and identified Stewart’s truck as the one that hit Phillips and fled the scene.

Gulfport police found the pickup truck hidden under some brush at a Mississippi Coast home.

Judge Larry Bourgeois sentenced Stewart to 20 years in prison, with 7 suspended and 13 years to serve in prison, followed by five years of post-release supervision. He also fined him $2,000 and ordered him to pay $5,600 in restitution to the victim’s family.

Stewart’s attorney, Richard Smith, had asked the judge to consider allowing Stewart to serve any prison sentence under house arrest, but the judge shot down the request when Stewart denied being a current drug user and then tested positive for marijuana use Thursday.

Stewart told him the test results Thursday couldn’t be right because he had not smoked any marijuana in 30 or 40 days.

Bourgeois didn’t buy it and went over a laundry list of repeated misdemeanor driving offenses against Stewart over the years, primarily for careless driving, driving without a license, and driving without insurance, along with misdemeanor marijuana charges.

“You have a bunch of misdemeanors, all of them driving (offenses),” Bourgeois said. “Most of the time, those don’t mean anything, but you have shown absolutely no respect for the law. You keep doing the same thing over and over. You don’t go get insurance. You don’t go get a driver’s license, and you continue to drive a vehicle …. and now you test positive for marijuana.”

“You are going to the penitentiary,” the judge added.

The judge considered other factors before sentencing, including the statements from relatives of Phillips, who still mourn her death.

“The day I received the news that my daughter was gone, I was home and heard a knock on the door, and when I opened it, I saw her children’s father out of breath and his daughter hysterically crying,” Phillips’ mother, Angelina Rose, said in a letter to the judge.

The child’s father couldn’t speak, she said, because of his tears and handed the phone to her, and that’s when she learned her daughter had died.

“Sir, you took a part of my heart from me,” she said. “I felt like you took my life. Then I started thinking about her three children. You hit their mother and left the scene. You left a mother, a sister, a daughter, a working member of the community … and then go on about your day like nothing happened.”

“That shows no compassion,” she said.