Rashad Meleek Trice, who was handcuffed at the time, warned authorities last year that he would most likely spend the rest of his life behind bars, and that is precisely what would happen to him.
Wynter Cole-Smith, the 2-year-old daughter of his ex-girlfriend, was abducted and killed, and a Michigan judge sentenced him to an obligatory life sentence on Friday, according to The Lansing State Journal.
“You, Rashad M. Trice, truly deserve the death penalty for maliciously taking the life of Wynter Ava’Mae Cole Smith,” the child’s maternal grandmother, Willeen Cannon, said in a statement read to the court by an assistant attorney general, according to NBC Detroit affiliate WDIV.
“You say you are a monster, but a monster is just who it is and don’t hide from the sinister things you do and create. You are an evil coward and you live like a wild animal. So you should feel right at home for the rest of your life. You deserve where you are and where you are going. Wynter did not deserve what you did to her, nor did to her mother, you should never be able to be around decent human beings after what you’ve done. Rot in hell.”
Early in July 2023, Trice triggered an Amber Alert in the city of Lansing. After stabbing Wynter’s mother, his ex-girlfriend, he kidnapped the 2-year-old and fled in her 2013 Chevrolet Impala.
On July 3, 2023, at around 4:50 a.m., a policeman in St. Clair Shores, a Detroit suburb located roughly 90 miles east of Lansing, noticed the Impala and attempted to pull it over. After a brief pursuit, Trice took off and collided with another police vehicle, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit stated that despite discovering “a significant amount of blood was present in the vehicle consistent with Trice’s stab wounds” and pieces of a pink charging wire, authorities were unable to locate Wynter, which prompted a furious hunt.
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Trice claimed he last saw Wynter with her mother and denied having taken her. Following the kidnapping, FBI investigators tracked Trice’s whereabouts using cell sites. Officers discovered Wynter’s body in an alleyway in Detroit, close to Coleman A. Young International Airport, between Olympia Street and Edgewood Avenue, just before 7 p.m. on July 5, 2023.
The affidavit stated that Wynter’s cause of death seemed to be strangling using a pink cell phone charging wire that was found with the body. “The pink cord parts recovered from the Chevrolet Impala were consistent with the pink cell phone charging cord.”
Cannon described her granddaughter as a “very affectionate, bright, and brilliant toddler.”
She remarked, “She was so full of love.”
In the end, Trice entered guilty pleas to the charges in both the state and federal courts. He was also sentenced to 60 to 90 years in prison on Friday by the judge for first-degree criminal sexual behavior, which included attacking Wynter’s mother. During his state hearing, Trice allegedly declined to speak to the court.
According to court records, his federal case’s sentencing is set for this Friday. Federal prosecutors decided not to pursue the death penalty, so the highest punishment he might receive there would be life in prison.