A St. Paul man was sentenced Tuesday to 72 years in prison for killing his ex-girlfriend, her teenage daughter and her 11-year-old son.

TeKeith Syvone Jones, 26, pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of D'Zondria D. Wallace, 30, La'Porsha Wallace, 14, and Ja'Corbie Wallace, 11, in their St. Paul home on Jan. 31. Jones was sentenced in Ramsey County District Court.

In a police interview, Jones eventually confessed to the shooting but gave inconsistent answers on the motive. "Jones didn't know why he killed them," charges say, but claimed he was trying to "save them."

An officer was called to the home on a welfare check only an hour before the January shooting and turned away after Wallace answered the door and told him she was all right.

Officers were called to a fourplex on the 700 block of Jessie Street at around 3 p.m. after a relative entered the home and saw blood "everywhere," according to the criminal complaint. First responders found La'Porsha wounded on the floor, shot 10 times. Her mother was dead on the couch with two gunshot wounds.

Son Ja'Corbie was still alive and told first responders Jones shot him. He died a few hours later in emergency surgery, according to the complaint.

Wallace told her mother she'd broken off the relationship with Jones several weeks earlier but relayed concerns about his increasingly violent behavior. A nephew later told police that Jones continued to come by the house even after the breakup and always carried a semiautomatic handgun.

The nephew recalled an incident in December where Jones broke in through a kitchen window, "swung her around," and accused her of seeing other men.

Jones eventually calmed down, charges say. The next morning he fired a pistol at Wallace but missed. She never reported the incident to police.

"She was fearing for her life," her mother, Mary Wallace, told the Star Tribune. She reportedly began seeing someone else in mid-January. "He was jealous."