Gulfport man wants forgiveness after fatal hit-and-run crash. ‘I’m not a monster.’
A Gulfport man said he didn’t realize he had fatally struck a woman as he sped down Highway 49 on his way to work at the Walmart Supercenter in D’Iberville in 2022.
“I looked, and I didn’t see nothing,” Mickel Anthony Stewart, 26, said when he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of leaving the scene of a Jan. 31, hit-and-run crash that resulted in the death of a pedestrian, identified as Princess Ann Phillips, 33, of Gulfport.
Judge Larry Bourgeois deferred sentencing until March 25. Stewart is facing a prison sentence of up to 20 years and or up to a $10,000 fine.
Stewart was barreling down the highway in a Ford F-250 truck just after 3 a.m. the morning of Jan. 31, 2022, when he fatally hit Phillips as she walked down the road, police said.
Phillips said he knew he had hit something and stopped further down the highway, looked out of his truck, but never saw the young woman lying in the roadway He then left to drive to work, stopping once in Biloxi to remove the damaged grill from the truck with significant front-end damage.
“If I (had) honestly seen somebody, I would have stopped,” Stewart said. He then turned to Phillips’ family to apologize, prompting one of the woman’s relatives to get up and leave the courtroom.
“I’m not a monster,” a tearful Stewart said. “This is not me. I got family and kids, too. I would have stopped if I would have seen her. I would have stopped. I’m not that person. I would have helped her.”
Stewart said he didn’t know until later that what he had hit was a pedestrian, later identified as Phillips.
Four days after the hit-and-run death, Gulfport police arrested Stewart.
After the crash, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Burell said, police obtained and reviewed camera footage from area businesses to find the truck that killed Phillips. A witness had told Gulfport police at the scene that someone in a brown truck had hit Phillips and driven away.
Police subsequently got a video that showed Stewart pulling into Walmart that day for work.
Four days later, Gulfport police found Stewart and made the arrest. The wrecked truck, Burrell said, was hidden behind some bushes when police found it.
After hearing all the evidence and what Stewart had to say, Judge Bourgeois put off sentencing to give himself time to review the video footage Gulfport police had collected after the crash, including any footage of Stewart stopping as he had indicated to look back.
