Staff photo / Chris McBride Defendant Noel Flores and attorney Jeffrey Goodman appear before Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Andrew Logan Tuesday to face sentencing in the 2023 shooting death of Ashantae Fisher-Kirksey.

WARREN — The fate of Warren man Noel Flores was sealed as he stood before Trumbull County Common Pleas Court Judge Andrew Logan on Tuesday.

The proceedings marked the end of a tragic chapter that unfolded in November 2023, when Ashantae Fisher-Kirksey, a 26-year-old mother of four, was shot to death in her home on Francis Avenue SE.

“You shot into a home and killed an innocent bystander,” Logan said. “This shows that people who carry guns always end up with bad results.”

Logan pronounced a sentence spanning 14 to 19.5 years of incarceration for Flores, who pleaded guilty last month to involuntary manslaughter with a firearm specification.

Family and friends of the defendant were present in the courtroom as Flores addressed the court, apologizing for the events that unfolded that night and expressing sorrow for the loss Kirksey’s children suffered.

Flores’ additional charges included one count of improper discharge of a firearm into a habitation with firearm specifications, and three counts of illegal possession of a firearm on liquor permit premises.

Flores was booked into Trumbull County jail in December following extradition from St. Petersburg, Florida, where U.S. Marshals tracked him to an apartment. Flores was found with a 9-mm firearm, the same weapon used in Fisher-Kirksey’s death.

“We’re very satisfied with Judge Logan’s sentence in this case,” Trumbull County Assistant Prosecutor Chris Becker said. “He gave the maximum sentence on the manslaughter charge, which is the appropriate sentence we feel in this case.”

Becker delved into some of the case’s intricacies, which included a self-defense motion previously filed by Flores’ attorney Jeffrey Goodman before Flores pleaded guilty in late March.

“This case had a very strong possibility of resulting in a self-defense argument by the defendant. Of course, his attorney had to file such a motion, and we were prepared,” he explained. “We felt that at trial, he might have a good chance of getting a self defense Instruction and maybe even a self-defense verdict, which would have been an acquittal.

“So there’s a fair balance between the murder, which carried a potential life sentence, and the fact that he could have very easily been found not guilty by a jury based upon the facts and in this case, the argument of self-defense.”

The complexities of the case were evident as Becker divulged some of the circumstances around the shooting death of Kirksey-Fisher.

“This is a problem in this case where an individual who was in the house where Miss Kirksey was fired a weapon from inside the house. Mr. Flores was outside the house when he fired his weapon back,” he detailed. “So the whole trial was going to come down to who do you believe fired first, was it Mr. Flores, who fired in self-defense because someone in the house was shooting at him? Or was the person in the house shooting at Mr. Flores in self-defense?”

Becker noted that the case presented some challenges. “It was very confusing, and some of the parties were not truthful with the police,” he said. “And that’s always very harmful to our case when we don’t get people that are truthful with us.”

Setting the record straight, Becker said, “In fact, they tried to blame Mr. Flores for shooting his gun earlier that day at a bar when in fact the individual who was in the house and had fired at Mr. Flores, he was the one who had fired the gun at the bar earlier that day, and we could have proven that by ballistics.”

Concluding his statement, Becker underscored the significance of the outcome. “It’s a very good result. It’s why sometimes even though people don’t accept plea bargains, sometimes this is why you have a plea bargain situation,” he said.

“Mr. Flores had an arguably good case for self-defense. Potentially, he could have been looking at a life sentence. So this 14 to 19 and a half-year sentence is a fair agreement in the middle, and it’s probably where this case should be.”

The family of Kirksey-Fisher appeared in court on March 27 when Flores pleaded guilty, but Becker said they had been unable to get in contact with the family to appear for Tuesday’s sentencing.