Man pleads guilty in fatal kidnapping of 2-year-old Michigan girl in 2023

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A Michigan man pleaded guilty Friday to the kidnapping and murder of a 2-year-old girl whose disappearance last summer sparked a 100-mile (161-kilometer) search that stretched from the nation’s capital to Detroit.

Rashad Trice, 27, admitted to taking Wynter Cole Smith from her Lansing home as part of a dispute with an ex-girlfriend who was the girl’s mother.

The girl was strangled with a telephone cord and left in a Detroit alley last July, investigators said.

Trice was indicted in federal court. Although the kidnapping did not cross state lines, there was federal jurisdiction because the car and other tools used to carry out the crime, including a telephone, were made outside Michigan, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

“My hope is that this will provide Wynter’s family, friends and all law enforcement partners who were and continue to be affected by this tragedy with a sense of closure,” said Lansing Police Chief Ellery Sosebee.

Until the girl’s remains were found, searchers had spread out to look for her along a highway between Lansing and Detroit, an effort that involved divers, dogs, drones and helicopters.

Trice faces a life sentence. Separate charges against him are pending in court.