WATERLOO, Iowa — A 37-year-old man has been given life in an Iowa prison for killing a Minnesota man outside a nightclub in Waterloo.

Rodolfo Gonzalez was sentenced Monday in Black Hawk County District Court. He’d been convicted of shooting to death 35-year-old Celio Posada of Minneapolis in August 2014.

Police and court records say the two met at the nightclub and later left for the parking lot, where witnesses reported hearing gunfire. Posada was found in the lot with two gunshot wounds. Gonzalez was stopped by a sheriff’s deputy a few blocks away.

Gonzalez has said he was only defending himself after Posada menaced him with a knife.