Insets: Tara Anderson (Madison County Jail) and Phillip Armstrong (Barry Wilson Funeral Home). Background: The 100 block of Madison Avenue in Granite City, Illinois, where Anderson shot and killed Armstrong (Google Maps).
An Illinois woman has been sentenced to more than five decades in prison for killing her former boyfriend after firing a shot she said was meant only as a warning. The bullet traveled through a fence and struck him from roughly 100 feet away.
Tara A. Anderson, 40, received a 55-year prison sentence Tuesday in the death of 39-year-old Phillip Armstrong, according to a press release from the Madison County State’s Attorney’s Office. A jury found her guilty of first-degree murder in May.
The fatal shooting happened on Sept. 24, 2023, outside Anderson’s residence on the 100 block of Madison Avenue in Granite City, a community in southern Illinois.
Prosecutors said Anderson had asked Armstrong to come to the property and retrieve a vehicle. When he arrived and began loading it onto a trailer, Anderson confronted him, went inside her home and returned carrying a handgun.
She then fired through a wooden fence, striking Armstrong. Anderson was approximately 100 feet from him at the time, the Belleville News-Democrat reported.
Anderson testified at trial that she fired a “warning shot” to frighten Armstrong and make him leave. Prosecutors challenged that explanation, noting that Anderson had invited him to the property to pick up the vehicle.
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The state also introduced evidence that Anderson had expressed a desire to kill Armstrong. According to testimony, she told a friend she was “going to kill that [expletive].”
“These were not idle threats. They were promises,” Assistant State’s Attorney Morgan Hudson told jurors during closing arguments. “She’s a woman of her word.”
Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Haine characterized Anderson as “angry, armed and looking to harm.”
“No one gets to claim ‘warning shot’ after firing directly into an area where they know a person is standing,” Haine said. “The law is absolutely clear: If you shoot at someone and hit them, that is not an accident. That’s murder.”
Armstrong’s 13-year-old daughter also addressed the court during the sentencing hearing, delivering a victim impact statement about the loss of her father.
“It felt like my whole world had been taken away from me, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to keep going without my dad,” she said.