A Nevada man who reportedly murdered a toddler by beating him and then feigned not knowing the child's whereabouts has made headlines after claiming that his sentence for the crime was unfair.
Terrell Rhodes, 31, was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 22 years served following the death of his girlfriend's toddler, Amari Nicholson.
Following Amari's disappearance on May 5, 2021, Rhodes appeared on screen and on multiple TV news broadcasts in which he pleaded for the child's safe return.
"If anybody's got him, bring him back," Rhodes said.
Rhodes later confessed to having committed the murder himself about six days later, stating that he beat the child to death after the child wet himself, an accident which enraged Rhodes. Rhodes admitted to having punched the child in the face multiple times until baby Amari "turned blue and purple in the face and stopped breathing."
"Terrell laid Amari on the floor and attempted [CPR] but was unable to revive Amari," the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department wrote in a report. "Terrell carried Amari's lifeless body out of the apartment and disposed of Amari at a different location."
"He killed my baby," Tayler Nicholson, the baby's mother, said in 2021. "He just confessed. I'm with Metro [Police] now."
Rhodes was convicted of murder in the first degree, for which he was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, and one count of assault on a protected person after he attacked law enforcement while being interrogated, for which he was sentenced to 28 months to 72 months behind bars. Clark County District Court Judge Jacqueline Bluth determined that he would have to serve these sentences consecutively.
"I just feel like it's not fair," Rhodes said of his sentences during sentencing, reported CBS affiliate KLAS.
"There is nothing that that child could have done that would have ever deserved what you did to him," Bluth then told Rhodes.
Amari's mother, Nicholson, and grandmother Carrie Howard, both spoke during Rhode's sentencing hearing.
"It doesn't go away or get easier," Nicholson said.
"I get to stop in a cemetery and talk to my grandson's headstone," Howard said. "There are no words to explain the emptiness and hurt that comes with losing my grandson in such a violent manner."
