Ex-model who kicked Wichita toddler during racist grocery store rant gets prison
A former high-fashion model who kicked a Black toddler during a racist tirade in an east Wichita grocery store is headed to prison after the county’s lead prosecutor told a judge Thursday that other rehabilitation options had been exhausted.
Trace Riff, whose modeling career landed him in international runway shows and magazine photo spreads, was sentenced to 32 months in prison for the December 2018 attack on the 1-year-old boy and for methamphetamine and inhalant-huffing crimes. The child was shopping with his pregnant mother and an older sibling at the Dillons store at Douglas and Hillside two days before Christmas when Riff, who is white, shouted racial slurs and kicked him in the back.
Riff pleaded guilty to attempted aggravated battery, disorderly conduct, unlawful abuse of toxic vapors and meth possession in May 2019.
During Riff’s sentencing hearing Thursday, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett told Judge Jeff Syrios he thought the community’s interest would be best served if 33-year-old Riff received substance abuse and mental health treatment in lieu of lockup. Riff has a history of drug use and mental illness that took him from high-fashion runways to sleeping in dumpsters, The Eagle previously reported.
But, Bennett said, the state’s mental health hospital refused to take him, and Riff failed a trial-run at following probation rules when he was released from jail in March.
‘We’re out of options at this point,” Bennett told the judge, noting that Riff didn’t check in as required after leaving jail. He also said a living and work arrangement Riff made with a family member had fallen through.
Riff’s defense attorney told the judge that Riff, who has schizophrenia and a drug addiction, “found himself at loose ends” when the court freed him on bond this spring. Jama Mitchell argued that March was “a very difficult time to be supervised” but described Riff as “very stable right now.”
She said he did well during a stay at the state hospital in Larned and could be successful on probation with substance abuse and mental health treatment.
But the judge disagreed, saying a report from the Larned hospital indicated Riff wasn’t willing to accept treatment and therefore no community-based program would reduce his chance of re-offending.
Syrios added that he thinks Riff’s attack on the toddler is a result of what’s “of the heart” rather than drug use.
The sentencing hearing was held over a remote video feed that allowed the attorneys, Riff and the judge to appear while they were in separate rooms in the courthouse and jail. The court has temporarily halted in-person hearings with defendants housed at the Sedgwick County Jail as it battles a COVID-19 outbreak among staff and inmates.
This story was originally published August 27, 2020 at 4:25 PM.
