Background: News footage of the scene in Peoria, Ill. where Roderick Richardson was killed in October 2023 (WEEK). Inset: Tnashia Wash (Peoria County Sheriff”s Office).

An Illinois woman who shot her boyfriend in the back during an argument has been sentenced to decades in prison.

Tnashia Wash, 20, was a teenager when she fired six shots at 30-year-old Roderick Richardson on Oct. 16, 2023. According to the Peoria County State’s Attorney’s Office, Wash admitted to police at the time that she shot Richardson, but claimed that it was in self-defense. She and her child had been staying at Richardson’s home at the time, and the couple got into a fight about their relationship. Wash claimed that Richardson threatened to shoot her and her child, and she took his gun, firing six shots when he “charged” at her.

But an autopsy on Richardson determined that four of those shots hit him in the back.

According to prosecutors, the coroner determined that the four shots to the back that hit Richardson were not fired at close range. His gunshot wounds were inconsistent with Wash’s claims of self-defense.

Wash eventually pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in June, days before she was set to go to trial. Due to her young age at the time of the crime, Chief Judge Katherine Gorman sentenced Wash to 31 years in prison. She could be eligible for parole after 20 years.

Prosecutors said that Richardson’s mother wrote a letter that was read at the sentencing hearing that described the “unimaginable pain of having to bury her son.” Richardson’s mother wrote that Wash “didn’t just take her son’s life but shattered their family and left a permanent hole that can never be repaired.”