A Bedford County woman was convicted Tuesday of shooting her boyfriend dead under circumstances she says she does not remember.

Tammy Spencer, 49, who maintains that she blacked out when her boyfriend, Charles Edwin Pagans, was shot in the head in her home, pleaded no contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter in Bedford County Circuit Court.

She initially had been charged with murder, but Commonwealth's Attorney Randy Krantz took that charge off the table, unable to determine if the shooting was premeditated or occurred during a struggle.

Pagans had threatened Spencer with a gun before, Krantz said.

Spencer and Pagans lived in the 1000 block of Forestland Drive near Vinton, where they were known to neighbors for their volatile relationship and for taking target practice in their back yard.

Krantz said the couple, apparently under the influence of drugs or alcohol, occasionally called deputies to the property with claims of "armed patrols in the woods trying to get them."

"They had a joint, agitated paranoia," Krantz said. "She joined in Mr. Pagans' view of things."

Krantz said he decided not to pursue a murder conviction because a forensic pathologist could not definitively say how Pagans came to be shot. He was lying down when he was killed and had a .38 blood-alcohol content, but even that high level of alcohol might not have been enough to knock out a heavy drinker like Pagans, Krantz said.

Both Pagans and Spencer had gunpowder residue on their hands. While Spencer is the only person in a position to explain the evidence, she has maintained that she blacked out, Krantz said.

"It is not improbable that there was a struggle over the gun," Krantz said. "She told police they had argued that day and she'd even given him an ultimatum to leave."

As part of her plea agreement, Spencer will face between three and 10 years in prison when she is sentenced June 29.

Pagans' uncle, John Renick of Salem, said he is "not real super-happy" with the possibility that Spencer will spend only three years in prison. "We miss him," Renick said of his nephew. "It's a sad situation. And a waste."