JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A central Missouri teenager has been sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in the killing of a 9-year-old girl.

Alyssa Bustamante was sentenced Wednesday in Cole County Circuit Court. She pleaded guilty in January to second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the October 2009 stabbing and strangling of her neighbor, Elizabeth Olten, in St. Martins, a small town west of Jefferson City.

Bustamante, who was 15 at the time, now is 18.

Bustamante had been charged with first-degree murder. By pleading guilty to the lesser charges she avoided a trial and the possibility of spending her life in an adult prison with no chance of release.