Michigan man gets another life sentence in 2-year-old’s kidnapping death

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — A federal judge has sentenced a Michigan man who pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and murder of his ex-girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter to a second life sentence.

U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker sentenced Rashad Trice on Friday, a week after he was sentenced in Ingham County Superior Court to life in state prison without the possibility of parole on charges in the girl’s death and 60 to 90 years for attacking her mother. the Detroit News reported.

Prosecutors say Trice got into an argument with his ex-girlfriend in her Lansing apartment in July 2023. She stabbed Trice, who responded by stabbing her multiple times and sexually assaulting her. He left.

The woman went to her mother’s apartment in the same complex, leaving behind her 1-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, Wynter Cole Smith. Police were unable to find the girl.

Trice crashed his car in a Detroit suburb after police spotted him, but the girl wasn’t with him. Searchers searched for her along a highway between Lansing and Detroit using dogs, drones and helicopters. FBI agents eventually found the girl’s body in an overgrown alley in Detroit. She had been strangled with a telephone cord.

Federal prosecutors took over jurisdiction of the case because the car and other tools used in the crime were made outside of Michigan.

Trice pleaded guilty in March to a federal charge of kidnapping resulting in death, acknowledging that he had taken the girl from her home as part of a dispute with her mother. Prosecutors dropped the charge of kidnapping a minor, but Trice’s plea earned him a mandatory life sentence.

“Mr. Trice deeply regrets these tragic events and accepts responsibility for his actions,” Scott Graham, one of Trice’s attorneys, said in an email to The Associated Press on Friday.