Rashad Trice receives second life sentence for death of Lansing toddler

GRAND RAPIDS – Rashad Trice was sentenced to a second life term Friday for kidnapping 2-year-old Wynter Cole-Smith from her Lansing home and strangling her with a telephone cord.

Seven days after an Ingham County District Court judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder, Trice received the same sentence from U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker – this time for his federal conviction of child abduction resulting in death.

Mark Totten, the U.S. district attorney for the Western District of Michigan, described Friday's hearing as “sombre,” as befits a case that carries a mandatory life sentence. He said he felt “some relief” and believed the government had obtained justice for Wynter, to the extent that it was possible.

“There is nothing we can do to bring back Wynter Cole-Smith's precious life,” he said minutes after the verdict was announced in federal court in Grand Rapids.

The federal court ruling ends proceedings related to events that unfolded in local and national media over the July 4 holiday weekend of 2023. The July 2 abduction sparked a nationwide search for him and Wynter. Police later found them dead in an alley near Detroit's Coleman A. Young International Airport on July 5.