Background: News coverage from Peoria, Ill., showing 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, now 20, was still in her teenage years when she shot 30-year-old Roderick Richardson on Oct. 16, 2023. The Peoria County State’s Attorney’s Office reported that Wash confessed to the police at that time, saying she shot Richardson, but insisted it was in self-defense. Wash and her child were living with Richardson, and during a dispute about their relationship, she alleged that Richardson threatened to shoot her and her child. She claimed she took his gun during the incident and fired six times as he “charged” at her.

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

Prosecutors noted that the coroner found the four shots that struck Richardson in the back were fired from a distance, which contradicted Wash’s self-defense claims.

Wash later admitted to first-degree murder in June, shortly before her trial was to start. Considering her age when the crime occurred, Chief Judge Katherine Gorman sentenced her to 31 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after serving 20 years.

At the sentencing hearing, prosecutors read a letter from Richardson’s mother, depicting the “unimaginable pain” of losing her son. She expressed that Wash “not only took her son’s life but devastated their family, leaving an irreparable void.”