Rashad Trice Pleads Guilty After Strangling 2-Year-Old To Death

The Michigan man faces a life sentence after he pleaded guilty abducting and strangling his ex-girlfriend's child with a phone chord.

In a heart-wrenching case, a plea agreement revealed Rashad Trice admitted to kidnapping and causing the death of his former girlfriend’s two-year-old daughter in 2023.

The Michigan man pleaded guilty to a “federal charge of kidnapping resulting in death,” facing a potential life sentence scheduled in July, reported People, which reviewed the agreement. Details from the plea agreement disclosed Trice confessed to abducting the two-year-old girl in a Chevrolet Impala, driving towards Detroit. In a chilling admission, he described playing a YouTube video “…in an attempt to pacify” the child before he used a phone cord to strangle her to death.

The events unfolded on July 2, 2023, at around 11:19 p.m., when Trice’s ex-girlfriend alerted authorities of a violent altercation between her and her now ex-boyfriend. A criminal complaint filed on July 7, 2023, revealed the woman claimed to have stabbed Trice in an act of self-defense before she was able to escape the Lansing, Michigan home, where she had been stabbed multiple times and sexually assaulted by Trice. The woman left behind her two-year-old daughter, Wynter Cole-Smith, and her one-year-old son when she fled to her mother’s apartment in the same complex.

Upon arrival, police discovered that Trice and Wynter had gone missing.

U.S. Attorney Mark Totten acknowledged the devastating nature of the case in a statement. “What happened is heart-wrenching, but today marks an important step forward as we seek justice for Wynter Cole-Smith’s family and the people of Michigan,” he said, according to People. Totten expressed gratitude towards the collaborative efforts of law enforcement agencies involved. “I’m incredibly grateful to FBI Michigan, the Lansing Police Department, and the more than two dozen other local, state, and federal partners who came running to help.”

Police arrested Trice on July 3, 2023, after he was spotted without the child, whose body was discovered days after the abduction near Detroit’s Coleman A. Young International Airport.

Attorney Totten is seeking justice for the family of the child and the people of Michigan.

The ex-girlfriend remains unnamed.