LANSING – More than a year after 2-year-old Wynter Cole-Smith was abducted from her Lansing home, strangled and dumped in a Detroit alley, and weeks after Rashad Trice pleaded guilty to killing her, her family still wonders what prompted him to do it.
“The big question was, ‘Why?'” Wynter’s grandfather, Almount Smith Sr., said Friday before Trice was sentenced to life in prison without parole. “Wynter was my first son, my only grandchild.”
Smith broke down in tears several times while speaking to Ingham County District Court Judge Joyce Draganchuk, who later sentenced Trice to the mandatory sentence for first-degree murder and a second term of 60 to 90 years for first-degree sexual abuse in connection with an attack on Wynter’s mother.
The words “coward,” “monster” and “murderer” don’t really describe Trice, the grandfather said.
“To me, you are none of those things,” Smith said. “To me, there is no word that describes you.”
Trice, 27, pleaded guilty on July 1, a day before the one-year anniversary of Wynter’s abduction and several months after pleading guilty in federal court to a charge of kidnapping resulting in death, which carries a life sentence. Federal authorities decided against seeking the death penalty.
The verdict is scheduled for August 23 in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids.
In federal court in March, Trice admitted to kidnapping Wynter from her mother in Lansing and later strangling her with a telephone cord. The July 2 abduction sparked a nationwide manhunt for him and Wynter, and police later found them dead in an alley near Detroit’s Coleman A. Young International Airport on July 5.
At one point, Trice faced at least 22 charges in federal court and three counties in Michigan. The state cases were later consolidated into a single case in Ingham County District Court, prosecuted by the state Attorney General’s Office.
Ingham County Public Defender Keith Watson said it was the first time he had allowed a client to plead guilty to a misdemeanor that carries a mandatory life sentence. Trice decided to plead guilty against his attorney’s advice, Watson said.
“I don’t know what shows more remorse than pleading guilty and facing a life sentence,” he said.
Assistant State Attorney General Danielle Russo Bennetts said Trice, who appeared in court via video link from the Newaygo County Jail, showed little emotion or “acceptance of grief.”
“There is responsibility here, but no remorse,” she said.
Trice, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and sitting over the video link with his elbows on his knees, refused to speak during the sentencing.
Contact Ken Palmer at [email protected]. Follow him on X @KBPalm_lsj.
