PALMER — The woman who fired the shots that killed Houston resident Terrell Houngues has been sentenced to 65 years in prison.

Superior Court Judge Eric Smith handed down the punishment for Kira Gray, 19, shortly after noon Tuesday for her role in Houngues’ death. He imposed a sentence of 19 to 99 years with 44 suspended for her conviction for first-degree murder and 10 years for kidnapping.

“I recognize this might be deemed as lenient,” Smith said of the sentence. “I doubt Miss Gray feels that way.” Smith said that, in his career as a judge, this was among the toughest sentencing decisions he’s had to make.

Houngues, 23, was found shot to death on Mother’s Day 2005 on an ATV trail in Houston.

At trial, prosecutors said Gray lured Houngues to the Mat-Su Valley with promises of money and drugs buried along the Parks Highway. There, on orders from her boyfriend, who was angry that Houngues had stolen some of his cocaine, Gray shot Houngues in the knee and then the face, prosecutors said.

A psychologist who testified at Gray’s two-day sentencing hearing said Gray admitted to her that she shot Houngues.

“She murdered her brother-in-law over a cocaine debt,” Assistant District Attorney Rick Allen said at the hearing.

Allen said the killing was cold-blooded. Gray allegedly shot Houngues in the knee and then, before emptying her pistol inhis face, told him, “I’ll take care of your kids. Houngues was engaged to Gray’s sister and Gray was the aunt to his children.

“What we’re talking about here is a sociopath. The chilling facts of this case cry out for a maximum sentence,” Allen said in asking for 99 years for the murder count and 10 for the kidnapping.

Allen pointed out numerous times when Gray could have stopped the chain of events that led to Houngues’s murder. Why didn’t she leave the state, go back home to Hawaii? Why didn’t she stop as she drove him from Anchorage to Houston and let him out?

Smith asked Allen about testimony presented during the sentencing hearing from psychologists arguing that the brains of teenagers have not yet fully developed and that Gray might have been incapable of making a rational decision when told to murder Houngues.

“When you weigh the fact that she was 16 at the time versus what she did, the magnitude of what she did, it’s not even close,” Allen argued.

Allen pointed to similarly youthful defendants who received the maximum sentence for murder, all of whom saw their convictions upheld on appeal. He spent a lot of time discussing a young man in Fairbanks who received 99 years in prison in the 1990s.

Gray’s attorney, Josh Fannon, argued that with regard to the Fairbanks case, data regarding brain development in teens had not entered the court system.

“They never had this information. You have it,” Fannon said. “We have to keep moving forward.”

Fannon argued for the minimum sentence, 20 years, for the murder conviction. He said prosecutors lacked credibility when claiming Gray was not remorseful because none of them had spoken to her.

As for whether Gray should have gone to Hawaii, Fannon said she tried. She missed her flight and her parents were trying to get her another ticket when the murder occurred.

At Tuesday’s sentencing, Smith also heard from Gray’s stepfather, Lyle Hefner, who said he knew Houngues well, had met him when he and Gray’s sister came to stay in Hawaii. As to how his other daughter should be sentenced, Hefner said, “When you sentence Kira you are sentencing our whole family.”

At his age, 59, if Gray received the maximum penalty, “I will never see my daughter again.”

Hefner’s testimony was at times interrupted by cries from Houngues’s mother, Pamela Williams, who teleconferenced into the hearing from Anchorage.

When her turn came, Williams berated Gray.

“I have nightmares about how I’ll kill you. But you know what? I don’t ever want the blood to run through my veins that runs through yours. In the name of Jesus,” Williams said.

At times sobbing, Williams told Gray she had taken her son and her best friend the day she killed Houngues.

“How can you live with yourself?” Williams asked Gray, who cried through Williams’ testimony.

Gray, who chose not to exercise her right to testify at sentencing, is the last of four defendants to receive her sentence for the killing. Her boyfriend, Mario Page, is serving a 65-year sentence, Tommie Patterson, whom prosecutors dubbed Page’s “enforcer,” received a sentence of 100 years. Frederick Johnson agreed to testify against the other three and, in exchange, was allowed to plead no contest to evidence tampering for which he received less than five years in jail.