Mother charged with killing children with shotgun
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) - September 2, 2011
Across the Mississippi River, their mother was arrested as she
sat with a shotgun on a bench outside a St. Louis television
station, having wrecked her car near the city's Gateway Arch after
driving into two pedestrians. The slain children's 8-year-old
brother had escaped the apartment unharmed.
Yokeia Smith, 25, was charged Friday with two counts of
first-degree murder in the deaths of daughter Yokela Smith and son
Levada Brown, whose father is in federal prison in Wisconsin for a
2006 bank robbery he says he carried out to help support the boy as
a newborn.
"We don't know why this happened. We have no clue," Yokeia
Smith's aunt, Martenia Jones, said Friday. "But some things happen
that the human mind can't understand."
St. Clair County State's Attorney Brendan Kelly declined to
discuss where Smith had gotten the shotgun seized during her arrest
or confirm it was the one used to kill the children Wednesday. He
also would not discuss a motive for the "brutal and frightening
deaths."
"I don't know what to say in the face of such evil," Kelly
said.
Relatives have said Smith was bipolar and had perhaps been
prescribed medication for depression or another mental illness.
Kelly would not discuss Smith's mental wherewithal Friday, saying
only that "she's aware of where she is and what happened."
"There's no indication she didn't understand the consequences
of her actions," he said.
Family members had previously worked to ensure the well-being of
Smith's children, after two Illinois Department of Children and
Family Services investigations between December 2007 and March of
this year, according to the agency.
The investigations were prompted by allegations of child
neglect, but there never had been reports involving physical abuse,
spokesman Kendall Marlowe said.
Smith also never lost custody of her children, although police
once briefly took them into protective custody, Marlowe said. The
agency did not take the matter to court because some of Smith's
relatives took steps to help care for the children, Marlowe said.
Smith's 8-year-old son was in protective custody Friday,
authorities said.
Smith remained jailed in St. Louis. Prosecutors there charged
her with armed criminal action and first-degree assault in
connection with her run-in with the two pedestrians, who were taken
to hospitals with injuries not considered life-threatening. Kelly
said it was unclear how soon she might be returned to Illinois.
The prosecutor said Smith had a "lengthy number of charges" on
her criminal ledger, including two years spent on probation after
pleading guilty in January 2007 to battering a pregnant woman.
Other charges Smith faced over time often involved "he said, she
said types of spats with neighbors," and in many cases those
charges were dismissed, Kelly said.
Neighbors who gathered outside the family's apartment building
after officers found the children's bodies Wednesday night had
cheered when told of Smith's arrest in St. Louis. Those approached
Friday said they knew little about the woman, noting she only moved
to the small two-story brick building in recent months.
"She just seemed like a normal person," said Clinton Bownes, a
30-year neighborhood resident who said he never saw Smith be
aggressive or violent with her children. He said they appeared to
respect her and honor her directives not to stray when they played
outside.
Court records show the father of Smith's 5-year-old son had
legal missteps dating to at least 2001. The elder Levada Brown
served probation on drug charges before serving short jail stints
for domestic battery and unlawful display of a license plate, court
records show.
In 2007, Brown pleaded guilty to robbery and using a firearm
during a violent crime, admitting in federal court that he was one
of four men involved in a 2006 holdup that netted nearly $36,000
from an Alton credit union. Court records show he admitted he "was
interested in the idea (of the robbery) because he needed money for
his newborn baby, so he agreed to participate."
"He really was an unusually good fellow," his attorney in that
case, Charles Stegmeyer, told The Associated Press on Friday,
remembering Brown as well-spoken and cooperative with prosecutors
while having "a certain charisma about him."
"Everyone - the government, myself - felt that just by chance
he got involved in this situation," Stegmeyer said. "He was not
the type of fellow who had a long history of problems."
East St. Louis Police Chief Ranadore Foggs said Friday that his
struggling city of 30,000 is too often confronted with tragedy.
"I can only tell you the loss of life of these dear beautiful
people hits us in the heart," Foggs added. "We as a community
hurt."
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Associated Press reporters Jim Salter in St. Louis and Carrie
Antlfinger in Milwaukee contributed to this report.