Alisa Carson gets 12-month suspended sentence in shooting incident plea agreement

During the Tuesday, June 1st afternoon docket of Warren County General District Court, the Commonwealth entered into a plea agreement with 41-year-old Alisa Carson on two firearms charges related to a March 29th shooting incident in her Church Street apartment. Carson, who holds the Happy Creek Magisterial District Chair’s seat of the Warren Count Republican Committee, pled “No Contest” to a misdemeanor count of “reckless handling of a firearm”. The Commonwealth consequently dropped a felony “willful discharge of a firearm, missile in/at an occupied building” charge.

Alisa Carson at the time of her March 29 late evening booking into RSW Regional Jail. Courtesy Photo RSW Regional Jail

“She said she thought it was unloaded,” Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nick Manthos told the Royal Examiner after completion of the approximate 10-minute hearing that began at 2:34 p.m. Substitute Judge Ryan Nuzzo accepted the agreement and found Carson guilty of the reckless handling charge. A “No Contest” plea does not admit guilt but acknowledges that the prosecution has the evidence to convict.

Per the plea agreement, Carson was sentenced to 12 months in jail, with all 12 months suspended. She will be on unsupervised probation for those 12 months and is ordered to remain on good behavior for that period of time.

Carson also sacrificed the involved Ruger .22-caliber handgun to the Commonwealth as part of the agreement. And defense counsel Jerry Talton told the court that his client would sacrifice her right of appeal of a guilty verdict as part of the agreement.

Carson sacrificed her right of appeal of the conviction and her Ruger .22-caliber handgun as part of a plea agreement with the Commonwealth. Royal Examiner File Photos

As reported in our story on her arrest “Church Street shooting incident results in charges against local woman”, Carson was booked into RSW Regional Jail at 11:58 p.m., Monday night, March 29, and released the following morning on a $5,000 unsecured bond. No one was injured in the incident at 17 Church Street in the rear of the old Murphy’s Building less than a block off the western end of East Main Street in Front Royal’s Historic Downtown Business District. See the linked arrest story for more on Carson’s previous June 8/9, 2020 news cycle appearance in Royal Examiner, this one with political, rather than criminal overtones.

Carson during her previous news cycle appearance in Royal Examiner surrounding criticism of the Va. Beer Museum and two independent candidates in the 2020 Town Election who attended a COVID-19 reopening ribbon-cutting there.