South Paris man gets nearly two years in prison for gun crime

A South Paris man was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Portland to 21 months behind bars for being a felon with a firearm.

Andrew Bean, 51, appeared in U.S. District Court where Judge D. Brock Hornby imposed the sentence, which included three years of supervised release.

Bean pleaded guilty in April to possessing a firearm after being convicted of four felony offenses.

According to a statement released by the office of U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II, a Maine game warden discovered in November that Bean had a 12-gauge shotgun near his home on Christian Ridge Road in Paris. He was barred from having firearms because of convictions for operating under the influence and operating under revocation in 2002 and 2006.

The case was investigated by the Maine Warden Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Bean’s brother, Stephen, 55, of Norway, and David Foster, 39, of Paris have pleaded guilty to similar gun charges in U.S. District Court. They were released on conditions, pending sentencing.

The three had been charged earlier in state court with fraudulently obtaining hunting licenses and being prohibited persons with firearms.

The state and federal charges stem from an incident on property adjacent to a Paris farm, where the brother of the two Bean brothers shot and killed 18-year-old Megan Ripley in an unrelated hunting incident in 2006.