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Left: Terrell Rhodes (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department). Right: Amari Nicholson (Obituary).
A Las Vegas man will spend at least the next two decades in Nevada state prison for murdering his onetime girlfriend’s toddler.
Terrell Rhodes, 31, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 22 years on Tuesday for the death of Amari Nicholson.
In sum, Clark County District Court Judge Jacqueline Bluth sentenced the defendant to 20 years to life behind bars on one count of murder in the first degree for the boy’s brutal slaying. Rhodes was also sentenced to 28 months to 72 months behind bars for one count of assault on a protected person for attacking a police officer during his interrogation. The court ordered those sentences to be served consecutively, or, one after another — dealing a blow to the defense.
Still, the condemned man felt he had not been treated fairly by some aspect of the criminal justice process in the Silver State.
“I just feel like it’s not fair,” he said during sentencing, according to a courtroom report by Las Vegas-based CBS affiliate KLAS.
The judge reportedly offered some measured empathy — acknowledging that Rhodes grew up under rough circumstances but reminding the killer that murdering Amari was not fair either.
“There is nothing that that child could have done that would have ever deserved what you did to him,” Bluth told Rhodes.
The victim was reported missing on May 5, 2021. In the days that followed, Rhodes appeared on local TV news broadcasts pleading for whoever was responsible to return the child.
“If anybody’s got him, bring him back,” the defendant feigned.
On May 11, Rhodes confessed to killing Amari.
“He killed my baby,” Tayler Nicholson, the child’s mother, said at the time. “He just confessed. I’m with Metro [Police] now.”
The since-condemned man would later say he beat the child to death after the boy urinated on himself. The toddler’s accident enraged the adult. In turn, using a closed fist, the man punched the child three or four times until he “turned blue and purple in the face and stopped breathing,” according to the arrest report filed in the case.
“Terrell laid Amari on the floor and attempted [CPR] but was unable to revive Amari,” the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department wrote in that report. “Terrell carried Amari’s lifeless body out of the apartment and disposed of Amari at a different location.”
In addition to the murder and assault charges, Rhodes was initially charged with two counts of attempted murder, as well as four counts each of assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon and resisting a police officer with the use of a firearm over the custodial contretemps.
In surveillance footage, Rhodes appears to be crying — pulling his shirt over his face and saying “let me go” and “I can’t go back.” He then slowly stands up from a chair, hunches his body over the table and places both hands down before using his uncuffed left hand to quickly reach across the table and grab a handgun from an officer’s waist holster.
Officers quickly pounce on Rhodes in the video. One repeatedly yells out “gun!” as the struggle progresses. One officer is seen delivering several quick jabs that appear to connect with Rhodes’ face. Ultimately, no one was injured during the incident.
In April 2024, Rhodes took a plea deal.
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During the sentencing hearing, Amari’s mother and other family members gave victim impact statements, according to KLAS.
“It doesn’t go away or get easier,” Nicholson said.
The slain boy’s grandmother, Carrie Howard, also spoke.
“I get to stop in a cemetery and talk to my grandson’s headstone,” she said. “There are no words to explain the emptiness and hurt that comes with losing my grandson in such a violent manner.”
