Rashad Trice: Man pleads guilty in kidnapping and strangling his ex-girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter with phone cord
DETROIT, MICHIGAN: Rashad Maleek Trice pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping and fatally strangling Wynter-Cole Smith, 2, with a pink cellphone charging cord.
However, in a recent agreement with the prosecution, he admitted to killing the girl and disposing of her body in an alleyway near Young International Airport in Michigan.
Rashad Trice entered a new plea in the murder of Wynter-Cole Smith
Trice submitted a revised plea on Friday, March 22. According to the federal court docket for the Western District of Michigan, US District Judge Robert Jonker, who was appointed by President George W Bush, is slated to sentence him on July 19.
The attorney representing Trice did not promptly reply to a request for comment.
A copy of the updated plea deal reveals that Trice, aged 26, admitted to engaging in a confrontation with Cole-Smith's mother, who is his ex-girlfriend, before kidnapping the girl. Records indicate that Trice was not the girl's father.
On July 2, 2023, he abducted the child from her Lansing home, transported her to Detroit in a Chevrolet Impala, and "throughout the night, he continuously played a YouTube video on the internet in an effort to calm the victim."
The plea agreement from March 22 states that the "defendant brought the victim to an alley between Olympia Street and Edgewood Avenue in Detroit, where he fatally strangled the victim using a pink cell phone cord."
Trice confessed to utilizing various methods of interstate commerce during the commission of the crime, according to Law&Crime.
These methods included utilizing interstate highways for travel from Lansing to Detroit and even employing a cellphone manufactured outside of Michigan to view videos of Cole-Smith online.
Rashad Trice has been proposed for a life sentence and a $250,000 fine
Records show that Trice was apprehended a few hours after the kidnapping following a short police car pursuit. However, the girl's body was not immediately discovered.
Three days after the search commenced, FBI agents and local police eventually located Cole-Smith's body in an alleyway using phone location data.
The abduction purportedly commenced when Trice allegedly stabbed and assaulted Cole-Smith's mother, who was 22 years old at the time, as Law&Crime reported.
State prosecutors are handling the charges in that case independently, according to Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV.
Police body camera footage showed Trice telling an officer as he was being handcuffed when he was eventually apprehended for the kidnapping last July: "I'll probably do the rest of my life in prison."
At this juncture, the longest sentence he could receive is the one mentioned earlier. Additionally, prosecutors have proposed a minimum fine of $250,000 and recommended a maximum of five years of supervised release if he does not receive a life sentence.
Rashad Trice faces multiple charges
In October 2023, US Attorney Mark Totten declared that the prosecution would not seek the death penalty.
Prosecutors have proposed dropping additional charges, such as the federal kidnapping of a minor, in exchange for his guilty plea on the federal kidnapping charge, which carries a death sentence.
It remains uncertain how this will impact his state charges, which also involve Cole-Smith's mother.
Accusations against him were consolidated into a single case by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel last year due to his multiple county convictions.
Trice was facing multiple charges, including two counts of first-degree criminal misconduct, a second-degree domestic violence charge, stalking, and more, according to a statement from last July that was posted on the attorney general's website.
