PARIS – A hunter from Paris pleaded guilty to manslaughter Monday and was ordered to serve 30 days in jail for the fatal shooting of a teenager in a wooded area behind her family’s farmhouse.

In a plea agreement, Timothy Bean, 51, was sentenced to two years in jail with all but 30 days suspended.

Manslaughter means the killing was unintended but was caused by recklessness or criminal negligence. Maine’s target identification law requires hunters to identify the head and torso of their target before they shoot.

Bean shot 18-year-old Megan Ripley in the chest on Dec. 7 while he was using a muzzleloader rifle to hunt for deer.

The plea agreement was supported by the victim’s family, said Assistant Attorney General William Stokes. The family, he said, was most interested in an acknowledgment of guilt along with Bean’s commitment to speak at hunter safety courses.

At Monday’s hearing, Ripley’s father stood up in the courtroom and publicly forgave Bean, Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese told Stokes, who was not in the courtroom.

“They are a very forgiving family,” Stokes said.

After he serves his sentence at the Oxford County Jail, Bean will be required to speak about hunter safety as a community service requirement of his two-year probation, Stokes said.

Bean also will lose his hunting license for life and pay $5,000 to a state-run victim’s compensation fund that paid for Ripley’s funeral expenses.

Ted Dilworth, the attorney for Bean, said his client wanted to take full responsibility for what happened.

“He wanted to put this behind him for the Ripley family and his own family,” Dilworth said.

Bean had no previous criminal record and a long sentence would have served no useful purpose since the shooting was clearly an accident, Stokes said.

“This is a man who has no prior history of criminality and he has accepted responsibility by pleading guilty, so 30 days acknowledges and recognizes the criminal conduct,” Stokes said. “On the other hand, society doesn’t need to be protected from him through a lengthy incarceration.”