Woman Gets Life After Teen Hit Man Kills Wrong Guy

A South Carolina woman was sentenced to life in prison after she hired a teen to kill a man and he allegedly killed the wrong man by mistake. Prosecutor David Stumbo says 41-year-old Karlita Desean Phillips of Greenwood was sentenced yesterday after being convicted of accessory before the fact of murder and soliciting a minor to commit a felony. Authorities say Phillips hired a 17-year-old to kill her estranged husband in 2013, but he killed her husband's brother, 31-year-old Jamil Phillips, by mistake, ambushing the victim as he slid his key into the door of his home in Abbeville.

The teen, who's awaiting trial for murder and possession of a weapon, testified he and Karlita Phillips were in a sexual relationship and that she paid him $13,000 to kill her estranged husband, Fox Carolina reports. "No family should have to endure what the Phillips family has had to endure," a prosecutor said in a statement released yesterday. "They have not been able to wake up from this nightmare and they still miss Jamil tremendously." The jury took just over two hours to deliberate, and Circuit Judge Frank Addy Jr. called Phillips' actions "reprehensible" as he handed down her sentence, per the news station. (An Ohio man killed someone with the right name—but it wasn't the right person.)