William David Phillips Sentenced

The man who claimed he heard voices telling him to run over a mother and her child in Jefferson City three years ago has now been sentenced. Back in June of 2019, William David Phillips drove his car onto a sidewalk in Jefferson City and struck and killed Sierra Cahoon and her 2 year old son Nolan. Sierra Cahoon was also pregnant at the time. Phillips also drove at Tillman Gunter before crashing into a building. Gunter was injured in the incident, but survived. At the time of his arrest, Phillips told investigators that he had left an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and said that the government told him “to hurt those people.” Phillips was originally charged with three counts of first degree murder and two counts of attempted first degree murder. For unspecified reasons, those charges were later dropped to reckless homicide. In June of this year, Phillips was found guilty on four counts of reckless homicide, one count of reckless endangerment and one count of felony reckless endangerment. Thursday morning in Jefferson County, a judge sentenced William David Phillips to 15 years, 11 months and 28 days in prison.