Man pleads to carjacking, robbery in fatal shooting outside Warren eatery

A 29-year-old man charged with murder pleaded no contest to carjacking and armed robbery for the death of a man outside a Taco Bell restaurant two years ago.

Deonte Rice of Detroit last week entered the plea to the charges and will be sentenced to at least 23 years in prison by Judge Julie Gatti of Macomb County Circuit Court for the shooting death of Danny Richards, 23, outside the Eight Mile Road eatery.

He is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 21.

Richards was shot during the carjacking by Rice’s co-defendant, Anthony D. Walker, 26, of Warren, who pleaded no contest to second degree murder, armed robbery and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Walker was sentenced in March to 25 to 54 years in prison by Gatti. Two of those years are mandatory due to the felony-firearm charge.

Both cases were resolved as a result of a plea deal in which Macomb prosecutors agreed to dismiss the highest charge of felony murder, which carries an automatic penalty of life in prison without parole.

Rice and Walker, who were in an SUV, carjacked Richards in a 2005 Mercedes about 11 p.m. Sept. 1, 2019, in the eatery parking lot. Walker shot Richards in the chest two or three times with a .380 caliber handgun as he tried to flee. Richards stumbled to his sister’s vehicle nearby and was taken to a hospital, where he died. The culprits stole the Mercedes driver’s Rolex watch, neck chain and car, which was driven away by Walker and found an hour later burned out on Sherwood Street near Seven Mile Road. Rice drove away in the SUV.

Police arrested the pair the next day.

At Walker’s sentencing, Yolanda Richards, Danny Richards’ mother, revealed her son’s girlfriend gave birth to his child after he died. She called that development a “miracle.”

“We’re grateful for my granddaughter, and she is almost 1 now,” she said. “She is beautiful and we love her so much. But she is not my son, and no one can take the place of him. He would have been a great dad. Danny came from a family of love.”