Killer of toddler Wynter Cole Smith sentenced to life in prison without parole – Crime Online

Nearly five months after pleading guilty to killing two-year-old Wynter Cole-Smith, Rashad Trice was officially sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Trice pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and sexual abuse in connection with an attack on the little girl's mother on July 1, the Lansing State Journal reported. In addition to a life sentence for murder, he was sentenced to a concurrent term of 60 to 90 years for the attack.

He pleaded guilty to kidnapping resulting in death in federal court in March and is scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court on Friday. The mandatory sentence for the deal is also life imprisonment.

Trice was charged with kidnapping Smith on July 2, 2023, as CrimeOnline previously reported. He was arrested just hours after the kidnapping, but the toddler's body was not found until three days later in an alley near Young International Airport.

In the settlement filed in March in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, Trice, who was not the toddler's father, admitted that he abducted the little girl from her Lansing home and drove her to the Detroit area because of an argument with the girl's mother. He said he repeatedly played a YouTube video “in an attempt to calm the victim down.”

Once in the Detroit area, Trice drove to the alley “where he strangled the victim to death with a pink cell phone cord” and left her body there.

The little girl's grandfather, Almount Smith Sr., made an emotional statement in court before the verdict was announced.

“The big question was, 'Why?'” Smith said. “Wynter was my first son, my only grandchild.”

Smith said the words “coward,” “monster” and “murderer” were not enough to describe Trice.

“To me, you are none of those things,” he said. “To me, there is no word that describes you.”

Ingham County Public Defender Keith Watson told the State Journal that Trice decided to plead guilty against his advice.

“I don't know what shows more remorse than pleading guilty and serving a life sentence,” he said.

But the state's deputy attorney general, Danielle Russo Bennetts, said Trice had shown “responsibility here, but no remorse.”

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[Featured image: Wynter Cole Smith/handout]