PROVIDENCE — If Alonzo P. Shelton was trying to avoid being sent back to prison by attempting to a kill a woman threatening to implicate him in a drug case, the plan backfired.

At his sentencing in Superior Court yesterday, Shelton was given two consecutive life prison terms, ordered to serve the remaining 17 years of an earlier conviction for assault with a dangerous weapon, and ruled a habitual offender, which resulted in his getting another 25 years behind bars.

Judge Robert D. Krause ordered that Shelton serve the four prison sentences consecutively, the attorney general office’s spokesman, Michael J. Healey, said.

The consecutive sentences mean that Shelton, 29, will have to serve a minimum of 72 years in prison, Healey said, before he becomes eligible for parole.

An ex-convict with a lengthy criminal record, Shelton was found guilty May 9 of murder, conspiracy to murder, assault with intent to murder, and discharging a firearm, death resulting.

He was accused of killing Jessica Imran, 24, and attempting to kill her friend, Julie Lang, 27, after Lang, a former girlfriend, was arrested for possession of crack cocaine and pressured Shelton to say the drugs were his.

The drugs were hidden in a pack of cigarettes that were found in Lang’s handbag when her car was stopped by Woonsocket police on Jan. 13, 2006.

Shelton, who was a passenger in the car, had just been released from the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston, having served three years of a 20-year sentence for assault with a dangerous weapon.

“Why are you doing this?” Lang said Shelton said when she pressured him to take the drug rap. “You know it’s just a charge for you. It’s six to 10 years for me.”

The shooting that the police and prosecutors say arose from the drug case took place in the early morning hours of July 27 in Imran’s apartment on Lawn Avenue in Pawtucket. The murder weapon, a small submachine gun, was never found.

But Lang survived, despite being shot four times and suffering five bullet wounds — the fifth an exit wound in her neck.

At Shelton’s trial before a jury of four men and eight women, she offered dramatic testimony, describing how Shelton and his 20-year-old nephew, Barry Offley, burst into Imran’s apartment and opened fire.

Shelton, who had addresses in Providence and Central Falls, and Offley, who lived in Providence, were arrested in Ocala, Fla., six weeks after the shooting. Offley had his case severed from Shelton’s, but he is being held at the ACI on the same charges: murder, conspiracy to murder, and discharging a firearm, death resulting. Healey said the case is expected to be tried during the fall.

jcastell@projo.com