Background: Trinity Poague reacts after she's found guilty of murdering her boyfriend's toddler son in Georgia. Inset: The victim, Romeo "J.D." Angeles (GoFundMe).
A Georgia beauty queen is headed to prison for at least three decades if not the rest of her life for beating her boyfriend's toddler son to death in her dorm room while he went to pick up a pizza.
The jury found 20-year-old Trinity Poague guilty of felony murder and aggravated battery in the death of 18-month-old Romeo "J.D." Angeles on the campus of Georgia Southwestern State University, where she was a student. She was acquitted of malice murder. A judge then sentenced her to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
Poague was an 18-year-old freshman at the school and in a relationship with J.D.'s father, Julian Williams. Prosecutors said Poague "resented" the boy because she wanted a child or children of her own with Williams.
J.D. was a "healthy little boy" when his father left the dorm room shortly before noon on Jan. 14, 2024, to go pick up the pizza, Prosecutor Lewis Lamb told jurors during his closing argument Friday.
"By 12:30 p.m., he was in a literal death countdown," Lamb said. "It wasn't a question anymore as to whether or not he might live. It wasn't a question anymore as to whether he could be saved. Wasn't a question anymore as to whether he would ever be able to grow up. At 12:30 p.m. he was dying."
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Williams rushed the boy who was vomiting and barely conscious to the hospital where he died.
Poague's attorney argued J.D. could have suffered the fatal injuries in a fall off a 40-inch-tall bed or at the hands of his intoxicated father the night before or when the defendant and Williams took a shower together.
"All those are reasonable doubts. You cannot come back with a verdict otherwise," attorney W.T. Gamble said.
In the end, the jury sided with prosecutors. Poague broke down in tears and there were audible gasps from the gallery as the judge read the verdict.
During opening statements, Lamb told jurors J.D. suffered catastrophic injuries, including bruises on his head, a fractured skull and a lacerated liver. Key to the case was when — and how — the boy suffered those injuries. Lamb says the brain bleed shows that J.D. had to have been hit in the head within an hour of being taken to the hospital. Videos of the boy showed he was fine when his father left to go to Walmart and pick up pizza. Poague was the sole person with him at that time.
Another key facet prosecutors emphasized to jurors was Poague's apparent dislike of J.D., who was also known as Jaxton Dru Williams.
Lamb described the relationship between Poague and Williams as rocky. A key source of the friction between the two was J.D., Lamb told jurors.
Poague allegedly texted her roommate that day, "I can't stand being around J.D. anymore. He hates me and I hate him."
She was jealous that Williams paid more attention to his son than to her.
"Trinity Poague resented this child," Lamb said, adding that she wanted to start a family with Williams.
Poague allegedly didn't want to embrace that stepmother role with J.D.
"She wanted to have a child or children with Julian Williams," said Lamb. "But not that child."
But Poague's defense attorney painted a far different picture of the series of events that led to the boy's tragic death. Gamble argued in his opening statement that his client is also a victim in the case because police and prosecutors jumped to conclusions about her guilt.
Gamble said the injuries likely occurred when J.D. fell off a bed that was 40 inches off the ground the night before he died. People in the dorm heard a child crying that night and his father was allegedly passed out drunk. There was very little food found in the boy's stomach, indicating he may not have felt well in the day leading up to his death, Gamble said.
"In seeking justice in this case, do not let justice be found at the cross of innocent blood," Gamble told jurors. "Trinity Poague is not guilty of the crime she is accused of."
As Law&Crime previously reported, the indictment alleges Poague inflicted blunt force trauma to J.D.'s head and torso with "malice aforethought." It also said Poague rendered the boy's brain "useless" and caused "serious disfigurement" to his liver.
On Jan. 14, 2024, the Georgia Southwestern State University Police Department contacted the Georgia Bureau of Investigation about the death of a child. The unresponsive boy was taken to the emergency room at Phoebe Sumter Hospital in Americus.
After multiple interviews and an examination of the evidence, GBI agents arrested Poague days after the homicide.
Poague was crowned Miss Donalsonville, Georgia, in 2023. She went on to compete at the National Peanut Festival beauty pageant, but she did not place.
"Win or lose, I have gained the world throughout my reign as Miss Donalsonville," she wrote on her Instagram page after the pageant. "To me, that is the best thing Jesus could ever do for me. He blesses me in EVERY SINGLE WAY. The National Peanut Festival title wasn't the crown I was meant to wear. I walked away still being the lovely, comical, achiever miss city girl that I've always been. In this experience I learned, and won. Gratitude. That is all I have throughout this experience."
The Early County News reported Poague has since been stripped of her title.
Her Instagram account says she enrolled at Georgia Southwestern State University in August 2023. Dothan, Alabama, CBS affiliate WTVY reported she graduated from Southwest Georgia Academy, a college-prep school in Damascus.
Poague has been out on bond since shortly after her arrest, something that did not sit well with Williams.
"This feels like a slap in the face to me and my family," he told WALB after her release. "All we want is justice for my son. Letting her out and being free is not right. She took an innocent 1-year-old's life."
