In the late spring of 2011, a story of love turned deadly unfolded in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland, ending the life of 20-year-old Wynetta Shamonta Wright. A Black female with aspirations of a career in law enforcement, her life was cut short, leaving a family to grapple with an unbearable loss. Her death, and that of her infant daughter, Jaylin, sent shockwaves through the community, not only for the brutality of the crime but also for the identity of the man responsible.
Wynetta was
last seen on May 30, 2011, when she went to meet her ex-boyfriend, Richmond Phillips, a 39-year-old married D.C. police officer. The meeting was arranged the night before a scheduled paternity and child support hearing for their one-year-old daughter, Jaylin. Friends said Phillips had asked to meet at a park to talk. It was there, in Oxon Run Stream Valley Park, that Wynetta’s body was discovered on June 2, 2011. She had been shot in the head. A short distance away, in a car, authorities found the body of her daughter, Jaylin, who had died from hyperthermia after being left in the hot vehicle.
The investigation quickly centered on Richmond Phillips. Evidence revealed that the couple had been seen talking at a picnic table for hours on the night of the disappearance. Police believe that Phillips lured Wynetta into the woods, where he shot and killed her. He then allegedly left their daughter strapped in her car seat to die in the sweltering heat.
Phillips was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of Wynetta Wright and the death of Jaylin. During his trial, another woman testified to having an affair with Phillips and seeing a 'small caliber' gun strapped to his ankle, which was not his service weapon. Prosecutors argued that this was the. 22-caliber gun used to kill Wynetta. The motive, they contended, was Phillips' desire to avoid child support payments and the complications a child outside of his marriage would bring.
In January 2013, a jury found Richmond Phillips guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, use of a handgun in a crime of violence, and first-degree child abuse. He was subsequently sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole, bringing a legal end to a case that began with a mother's hope for a father's involvement and ended in a senseless and tragic double murder.
