A 22-year-old Florida woman has sentenced to 15-years behind bars after fatally stabbing her mother.

Investigators say Mariya Lynn Kelly was sentenced to 180 months behind bars on Friday.

The incident occurred on June 17, 2020 at a home on the 2500 block of SW Embers Terrace.

Police arrived to find Kelly pacing back and forth in the front yard. Inside the home they discovered her mother dead from a single stab wound to chest.

When authorities interviewed Kelly she told them that tension in the household had been high for sometime and that she and her mother had been arguing a lot.

That morning, Kelly says she was putting away the dishes when she and her mother began arguing again. Kelly says during the argument she had been holding a knife and her mother told her to put down the knife. When Kelly told her mother ‘no’ Kelly says her mother became more upset and began striking her in the head.  Kelly then told police that’s when she stabbed her mother once in the chest.

Police reported that when they informed Kelly that her mother died, she seemed to be in shock and then began to cry before telling police that she did not intend to hurt her mother.

While Kelly was sentenced to 180 months, she will be credited 647 days which were served in the Lee County Jail.