On Monday afternoon, a woman who admitted to shooting her ex-husband in a South Point McDonald’s parking lot was sentenced to life in prison with a chance to present her case to a parole board after serving 23 years.

Belinda Adkins was sentenced by Lawrence County Common Pleas Judge Andy Ballard to serve 20 years for aggravated murder and three years for a gun specification.

On Monday morning, Adkins, as part of the plea agreement, admitted to shooting ex-husband Joshua Jones five times with the intent to kill him.

Under Ohio law, the judge had the options of sentencing her to 20 years, 25 years or 30 years before she could apply for parole or sentence her to life in prison without possibility of parole. The gun specification adds three years to the time before she can apply for parole, no matter the other sentencing time.

It will be 2041 when she has a chance to go before the parole board.

The sentencing is the same plea offer the Lawrence County Prosecutor’s Office made to Adkins at a November pretrial hearing. She turned down the offer and a one-week trial was scheduled to begin on Monday morning, but before a jury could be selected, Adkins decided to accept a plea.

“We are pleased with the outcome,” said Lawrence County Prosecutor Brigham Anderson. “She pled guilty to the indictment and we believe she went there with the intent to kill him. She killed him and she is going to spend the rest of her life in prison.”

Adkins shot her ex-husband, Joshua C. Jones, multiple times around 4:20 p.m. on Jan. 23 in the parking lot of the McDonald’s in South Point, where they had met after Adkins agreed to turn over the custody of one their children to him. Jones died of his injuries a few hours later at a hospital.

Adkins was sent to one of Ohio’s two prisons for women, either the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville or the Dayton Correctional Institution in Dayton, on Tuesday.