A Birmingham woman has pleaded guilty to the 2019 killing of a 5-year-old boy caught in family crossfire.

Rickkia Allen, 32, was charged with capital murder in the fatal shooting of Ta’Narius “TJ” Moore Jr., who died from a gunshot wound to the head. Prosecutors were planning to seek the death penalty.

On Thursday, court records show, Allen pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of felony murder.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Alaric May sentenced Allen to 21 ½ years in prison.

An unrelated attempted murder charge against Allen was dismissed as part of the plea.

TJ was in kindergarten at Center Point Elementary School and would have turned 6 the month after he was killed. He played youth league football in Huffman and just hours before his death had been named an All-Star.

North Precinct officers responded just after 2:30 p.m. that Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019, to a call of a person shot at 33rd Terrace North and F.L. Shuttlesworth Drive.

When officers arrived at the scene, they found TJ unresponsive. A neighbor at the time said she heard multiple shots fired, and then saw a man cradling the wounded boy in his arms.

Police said Allen and another woman – both family members of the boy – were engaged in an altercation. Both fired weapons at each other and the boy was struck.

TJ was sitting in a vehicle when he was shot. He was taken to Children’s of Alabama where he was pronounced dead.

TJ’s father and namesake, Ta’Narius Moore Sr., was shot to death in Collegeville on May 10, 2017.

Allen was later indicted on a separate charge of attempted murder for a case in which she was initially arrested n 2018. She was accused of intentionally hitting a man with her vehicle.

That charge was dismissed as part of her plea deal in TJ’s case.