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A Jefferson County man who brutally killed a woman, her two-year old child in a stroller and her unborn baby in 2019 when he intentionally ran them down in his vehicle in Jefferson County had his appeal denied by the Court of Criminal Appeals.

William David Phillips was convicted of three counts of reckless homicide, one count of reckless endangerment and one county of felony reckless endangerment.

After intentionally striking a man named Tillman Gunter, who was walking on East Main Street, Phillips turned on to driving on Chucky Pike where he drove at an extremely high rate of speed.

He later told authorities he believed a voice told him to kill meth dealers, authorities said at the time of the incident.

Phillips was apparently still driving extremely fast when he targeted Sierra Calhoun and her son, Nolan.

Detectives testified Calhoun tried to get herself and her young son out of the way but Phillips intentionally ran them down.

His Chevrolet crashed through the wall of Sustainable Aquatics and came to rest about 10 feet inside the structure.

In a document released Monday, the appeals court outlined why the trial court was correct when it issued a sentence of 14 years, 11 months and 29 days in the vehicular homicides.

Phillips had alleged in appeal that the court had erred in imposing an excessive sentence, denying probation and imposing consecutive sentences.

The Appeals Court, however, rejected the all of Phillips’ arguments.

“Based on the facts and circumstances, we conclude that the defendant is a dangerous offender whose behavior indicates little or no regard for human life, and he had no hesitation about committing crimes in which the risk to human life was high,” the court ruled. “The sentence imposed by the trial court is reasonably related to the severity of the offenses and is necessary in order to protect the public from further criminal acts by the defendant.”

The court did find one issue with the initial ruling and remanded the case back to the trial court to correct the error.

“We must note one problem with the judgments in this case. The trial court merged count three into count two. However, no sentence was imposed in count three,” the appeals court rulted. “While not required, ‘the best practice is for the trial court to impose a sentence on each count and reflect the sentence on the respective uniform judgment document.’”

The trial court will be asked to enter a judgment specifically for the third count.