PEORIA (AP) – A LaSalle County man was sentenced to 53 years in prison after pleading guilty to killing and robbing a mother of six last year to buy drugs, prosecutors said.

Jayson Schertz, 29, of rural Lostant, accepted a negotiated plea agreement Monday that will require him to serve 100 percent of the prison term for first-degree murder and residential burglary in the March 2003 killing of 42-year-old Cassandra Dunbar.

“In a year, Jayson Schertz will be forgotten. He will be a smudge somewhere on the floor of a prison,” Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons said.

Lyons said Schertz had smoked $160 of crack cocaine while driving the Peoria County countryside when he came upon Dunbar, who was alone and working in the yard of her home just west of Chillicothe.

Schertz told the woman he was lost and almost out of gas and asked her for $20, a ploy to get more money for drugs, Lyons said. She agreed, but Schertz feared she saw the .38-caliber handgun he was carrying when he got out of the car, Lyons said.

He followed her inside, where the two struggled and Schertz shot her three times, Lyons said. He then rummaged through Dunbar’s purse and took a checkbook, which he later used to cash a $100 check at a Chillicothe bank, Lyons said.

Police later found the gun and checkbook at the home Schertz shared with his mother.

Dunbar’s family wept as Lyons described the killing. Schertz held his head low and said little during the hearing in Peoria County Circuit Court.

Schertz recently claimed that another person was in the car with him at the time of the murder. Police are still investigating the claim, Lyons said.