DECATUR, Ala. (WHNT) — The jury trial for a Lawrence County man charged with his wife’s 2017 murder changed course Monday when he pleaded guilty.

Andreas Deone Shackleford, 47, of Hillsboro, was arrested days after his wife, 44-year-old Minnie Marie Shackleford, was killed in a home the two shared.

Court documents show Andreas Shackleford entered his plea ahead of a trial by jury, and was immediately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Officers with the Decatur Police Department responded to a home on 4th Avenue Northwest around 2:30 a.m. on March 9, 2017. When they arrived, they found Minnie Shackleford unresponsive on the bathroom floor with an apparent head injury.

First responders arrived and performed CPR, but soon determined she was dead.

An autopsy performed by the Department of Forensics Lab in Huntsville would later reveal the cause of death to be severe head trauma and strangulation.

Police named Andreas Shackleford as the suspect and arrested him, charging him with Minnie Shackleford’s murder.

He was booked into the Morgan County Jail on a $100,000 bond but was released a few months later before being indicted on the charges.

In 2022, Andreas Shackleford walked away from his murder trial. Still, he was found and arrested again by the U.S. Marshals Service Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force at the American Motel in Birmingham five days later.