PARK RAPIDS — A Menahga man has pleaded guilty to murder in the strangulation death of a 19-year-old woman.

Twenty-one-year-old Harley Leritz admitted to second-degree murder today in Hubbardy County court after being charged with first- and second-degree murder. He choked Kiela Knowles to death in her Park Rapids apartment in February.

Leritz is set to be sentenced to nearly 28 years in prison in December.

Park Rapids police officers found Knowles unresponsive with a pillow over her face. An autopsy confirmed she died of asphyxiation by strangulation.

Leritz admitted to police that he killed Knowles by choking her for 20 to 30 minutes. He had been held on $1.5 million bond.