The plea came more than two years after Prince McCree was found dead in a dumpster and after a co-defendant had already been sentenced to life in prison.
MILWAUKEE, Wis. — A Milwaukee teenager pleaded guilty Feb. 16 in the 2023 killing of 5-year-old Prince McCree, ending a trial before it began and bringing the last open criminal case in a death that shocked the city and later helped spur changes to Wisconsin’s missing-child alert law.
Erik Mendoza, now 18, admitted guilt to first-degree intentional homicide, hiding a corpse and three counts of second-degree recklessly endangering safety. He had been scheduled to go to trial in Milwaukee County Circuit Court but entered the plea instead. The case had already sent David Pietura, the other defendant, to prison for life without parole. Mendoza’s plea matters because it closes the fact-finding stage in one of Milwaukee’s most closely watched child-homicide cases, leaving sentencing as the next major step and renewing attention on how long Prince was missing before his body was found.
Prince disappeared on Oct. 25, 2023, from the home where he lived with his mother and where both defendants also stayed, according to prosecutors. Court records said the boy had remained home from school that day because he had a sore throat. Late that morning, he went to the basement to play video games. His mother later told police she returned to look for him after shopping and found the basement dark and empty. Pietura told her he had not seen the child. Officers who responded that day found blood in the basement and elsewhere on the property. When detectives asked about it, Pietura first said he and Mendoza had been roughhousing and that Mendoza got a bloody nose. Investigators later said that explanation did not hold up. As police kept searching the property, they found more blood and detained Pietura on an obstruction allegation while the effort to find Prince continued.
By the next day, investigators said the evidence had grown more serious. A K-9 unit detected the odor of human decomposition on the property, and detectives used a blood-detection agent to identify stains that were not visible to the naked eye. Prosecutors said Pietura then changed his account and told detectives they would find a golf club near a furnace in the basement. Investigators recovered one there. Police later found Prince’s body in a dumpster near his home, wrapped in white garbage bags, bound and gagged with duct tape. Surveillance video from the neighborhood, according to the criminal complaint, showed Pietura and Mendoza disposing of the body on the afternoon of Oct. 25. After detectives confronted Mendoza with the video and the condition of the body, prosecutors said he admitted, “I strangled him.” Court records said Mendoza also admitted striking Prince with a golf club and described the child as still alive during part of the assault. Authorities have said the violence continued outside before the two men disposed of the body.
The details laid out in the complaint were among the most disturbing in Milwaukee in recent years. Prosecutors alleged Prince was beaten, choked and repeatedly struck as the two defendants tried to silence him. Pietura later admitted he also joined the beating, according to the complaint. Investigators said the assaults continued even after Prince was bound and placed in garbage bags. One section of the complaint said Pietura used a heavy barbell plate during the attack; another said he later used a concrete birdbath pedestal. The complaint described the final blows as an effort to stop the child’s whimpering. Even with the guilty pleas, some questions may never be fully answered in open court because a trial did not proceed. There was no public airing of testimony from all witnesses, no cross-examination of the investigators who took the statements and no jury verdict after a full presentation of evidence. What remains clear from the court record is that both defendants admitted roles in the killing and in hiding Prince’s body.
The case also reshaped public discussion in Wisconsin about how police alert communities when children go missing. Prince did not qualify for a traditional Amber Alert under the narrow rules that existed at the time, and his disappearance became a rallying point for lawmakers and advocates who argued that the gap left families and neighborhoods without a quick public warning in many child cases. In April 2024, Gov. Tony Evers signed what became known as the Prince Act, expanding the state’s alert system for missing children. The law broadened the criteria for notifications beyond the older framework that was tied to stricter Amber Alert rules. The change linked Prince’s name to a statewide response, turning one family’s loss into a legislative push for faster public notice when children disappear under dangerous circumstances. For Milwaukee residents, the law became part of the case’s legacy, alongside the criminal prosecutions.
Mendoza’s case moved through the courts for more than two years and included repeated fights over how it should be handled. He was 15 at the time of the killing but was prosecuted as an adult. His defense sought to have the case shifted out of adult court and later raised questions about his mental condition. Court proceedings were paused at one point for a competency examination, and he was eventually found competent to stand trial. Prosecutors kept the homicide and related counts in place. Pietura, who was 27 when sentenced, pleaded guilty in June 2024 to first-degree intentional homicide as a party to a crime. In July 2024, a judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mendoza’s plea on Feb. 16, 2026, came just as jury selection and opening stages were expected to begin. His sentencing is scheduled for June 5 at 2 p.m. in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, where a judge is expected to hear arguments from both sides, statements from Prince’s family and any request from the defense for leniency within the bounds of the law.
Outside the courtroom, the case has carried a grief that never fit neatly into a charging document. Prince was a kindergartner whose disappearance touched neighbors, school staff and families far beyond Milwaukee’s west side. Public officials, reporters and community members have returned again and again to the same contrast: the ordinary details of a child home sick from school and the extraordinary brutality investigators said followed. During earlier hearings and public remarks around the new alert law, Prince’s family spoke of a boy remembered not by the horror of the case but by the life cut short. Those scenes have stood beside the court record as Milwaukee tried to make sense of the crime. Mendoza’s guilty plea does not settle every question about motive or erase the case’s graphic facts, but it does remove the uncertainty of trial. It leaves the city waiting for one remaining courtroom milestone and for a sentence that will mark the legal end of the prosecution, though not the end of the case’s impact.
For now, both men have admitted their roles, one has already received a life term and the second is due back in court June 5. The next public step is sentencing, when the judge will decide how long Mendoza will spend in prison and the family will again address the court.