A Suffolk man was sentenced on Thursday to 38 years to serve for a 2016 murder.

Markelyn Lamontre Jones, 19, was just 17 when he and then-19-year-old Mandocous Jayni Rivers burst into an apartment at Wilson Pines Apartments on East Washington Street on March 11, 2016. They shot and killed 23-year-old Aaron L. Hunter, assaulted another man and shot at, but missed, a third man in the apartment.

According to testimony during Rivers’ trial, the two went to the apartment that night. The resident at the apartment had stepped outside but came back in with his head bleeding and trying to keep an invader out of the apartment.

The man had told Rivers and Jones his young daughter was inside. It was not true and was only a ploy to keep them out, but they came in anyway.

One forced the man to the back of the apartment, and another came toward Hunter and another friend. He fired two shots, one of which hit Hunter. The other was located lodged in a wall.

Jones pleaded guilty to six charges related to the crime, including second-degree murder, on Nov. 16, 2016. However, in September 2017, he said he wanted to withdraw his pleas, which caused his defense attorney to withdraw and delayed his sentencing.

Rivers was found guilty in a December jury trial and sentenced in March to 138 years in prison.