According to prosecutors, Rashad Trice got into an argument with his ex-girlfriend in their Lansing apartment in July 2023. She stabbed Trice, who then stabbed her multiple times and sexually assaulted her. Then he left.

The woman went to her mother’s apartment in the same complex, leaving behind her one-year-old son and two-year-old daughter, Wynter Cole Smith. Police were unable to locate the girl.

Trice was in a car crash in a Detroit suburb after police found him but the girl was not with him. Search crews used dogs, drones and helicopters to search for her along a highway between Lansing and Detroit. FBI agents eventually found the girl’s body in an overgrown alley in Detroit. She had been strangled with a cell phone cord.

Federal prosecutors assumed jurisdiction over the case because the car and other tools used in the crime were manufactured outside of Michigan.

Trice pleaded guilty in federal court in March to kidnapping resulting in death, admitting that he abducted the girl from her home during an argument with her mother. Prosecutors dropped the charge of kidnapping a minor.

Trice faced a life sentence. His lawyers did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Friday afternoon.