A former beauty queen is now worlds away from her days competing in pageants as she appeared in court to face charges of murder.
Trinity Madison Poague, 20, appeared in a courtroom on Tuesday for the death of Romeo ‘Jaxton’ Angeles, who was found unresponsive in her Georgia Southwestern State University dorm room in January 2024.
The once-glamorous beauty queen, who held the title of Miss Donalsonville, was far away from the dolled up, crown-wearing pageant winner on Tuesday as she wore a pink sweater with a diamond necklace and her hair in loose waves.
She appeared nervous as she sat finickily in her seat twirling her rings and avoiding gazing at the camera.
She kept her face neutral throughout the proceedings and seemed hyperaware of when the cameras were pointed at her.
She kept her face neutral throughout the proceedings and seemed hyperaware of when the cameras were pointed at her.
Poague was arrested in January after Jaxton was found unresponsive in her dorm room and taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead hours later.
Authorities believed the child, who was only 18 months old, died of blunt force trauma wounds on January 14, an indictment, obtained by Court TV, said.
Poague allegedly caused ‘serious disfigurement to his liver’ and ‘rendered his brain useless,’ the indictment said.
Prior to his death, Poague had posted the toddler several times through his life.
She was arrested after several interviews with police and examining of evidence.
The former Miss Donalsonville, who was stripped of her title after her arrest, faces life in prison if convicted of malice murder, first-degree cruelty to children, and two counts of felony murder, and two counts of aggravated battery.
She has pled not guilty.
On Tuesday, District Attorney Lewis R. ‘Bud’ Lamb set up the scene, saying she and her boyfriend, Julian Williams, had gone out to dinner with the child the night before his death, before she said she was ‘stuck’ with the kid overnight.
She allegedly texted her roommate, Paris, that the child ‘hates me and I hate him,’ according to Lamb.
Poague later asked her roommate to sleep in her room as the child was allegedly being fussy and her boyfriend was no help. She claimed the child ‘rolled off the bed,’ but that he was okay.
The pageant winner took videos of the child, showing Jaxton had no bruises and was acting normally.
She later rolled back on the story to her roommate, before admitting the child had fallen off an air mattress, not her bed, Lamb said in court.
The next day, around noon, her boyfriend left to pick up a pizza. While out, Poague allegedly called him and told him the child was ‘not breathing’ and that she didn’t know what happened.
The father rushed the child to the hospital, and around 4pm, he died.
‘[He] didn’t have a mark on him,’ Lamb said of the night before. ‘He didn’t have any injury, he wasn’t in any distress.
‘But by the time the child got to the emergency room after spending 35 minutes in that room with Trinity Poague, he had fresh bruising on his face.’
The child was also experiencing brain bleeds and had several bruises all over his face and neck, as well as, a laceration on his liver. He also had a bone fracture at the back of his head that hemorrhaged, Lamb said.
‘That is an injury, and I believe the evidence will show, is referred to as a catastrophic,’ Lamb said.
‘It’s an acute injury. It’s not an injury that happens hours before, days before. It’s not an injury that happened the night before. It’s not an injury that could have happened, realistically, from a child falling off the bed, falling out of a chair, or anything else.
‘It’s an injury that could have literally only have occurred within a few minutes time before this child was presented at the emergency room.’
Poague’s attorney, WT ‘Tim’ Gamble III said Williams was a ‘controlling boyfriend,’ who had been drinking the night before the incident.
Gamble did acknowledge that Poague to had texted her roommate that night, but that investigators have ‘no evidence’ of the beauty queen committing the crime.
‘They have no evidence of a crime occurring at all,’ Gamble said. ‘You’ll see no blood evidence, you’ll see no DNA evidence, you will see no spittle evidence, you will no throw up evidence… You’ll see no blood splatter. You’ll see nothing.’
Poague graduated from the Southwest Georgia Academy in Damascus in May 2023, reported the Donalsonville News.
According to the Thomasville Times-Enterprise, she was a freshman at Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, studying nursing.
She was named one of 22 students to the President Jimmy Carter Leadership Program.
Requirements from the program include a minimum 1100 on the SAT or an ACT composite score of 22, a high school GPA of 3.0 or greater and strong leadership skills.
She was crowned Miss Donalsonville in 2023 and competed in the National Peanut Festival Pageant.
