LEVADA BROWN and YOKELA SMITH - 5 and 4 yo - St Louis IL

An Illinois mother arrested as she sat with a shotgun outside a
St. Louis television station was charged Friday with shooting to
death her two youngest children.


Yokeia Smith, 25, was charged with first-degree murder in the
deaths of 4-year-old daughter Yokela Smith and 5-year-old son
Levada Brown. Their bodies were found in the family's apartment
after an 8-year-old brother escaped unharmed.
"I don't know what to say in the face of such evil," St. Clair
County state's attorney Brendan Kelly said Friday. "These officers
will never be able to forget what they saw Wednesday night."
Autopsies on Thursday determined that each child was shot once
in the head at close range with a shotgun and died instantly.
Smith remains jailed in St. Louis, where she's accused of
hitting two pedestrians with her car near the city's Gateway Arch
shortly before her arrest. Those victims were taken to a hospital
with injuries not considered life-threatening.
Authorities say the found Smith with the shotgun on a bench
outside KMOV-TV after the wreck.
A judge ordered Smith held without bond Friday and it wasn't
immediately clear how soon she would be returned to Illinois to
face the murder charges.
East St. Louis Police Chief Ranodore Foggs called the killings
"certainly a reminder to all of us how precious life is," offering
condolences and the community's support to Smith's three aunts and
a cousin who attended Friday's news briefing.
One of Smith's aunts told reporters the killings may never be
explained but that the family still stands behind Smith. Her
relatives told media outlets she recently had been prescribed
medication to treat depression or a mental illness.
http://www.timesonline.com/news/national/ill-mother-charged-in-children-s-shotgun-deaths/article_b5681702-5002-5228-b60f-23a866e80618.html

EAST ST. LOUIS -- Yokeia T. Smith was charged Friday with
murdering two of her children with a shotgun, horrors the prosecutor
said couldn't be explained away as acts of insanity.
"She's aware of where she is and what happened. She knows what she's doing.
There was nothing to diminish her mental capacity, to say she didn't know what
she was doing," St. Clair County State's Attorney Brendan Kelly said.
Smith, 25, of 3040 Lincoln Ave. in East St. Louis, was charged Friday with
first-degree murder by Kelly. She was ordered held without bail by St.
Clair County Circuit Judge Milton Wharton, but remained in the St. Louis
city jail because police there said she ran down a man and his young
son Wednesday night after shooting two of her three children in their
home. Her third child escaped.
Kelly said there is no rush to bring murder charges because Smith is
in custody. St. Louis prosecutors on Thursday charged her with
first-degree aggravated assault and armed criminal action after police
said she hit a 42-year-old man and his 3-year-old son in a crosswalk
outside KMOV-TV at 1 Memorial Drive near the Gateway Arch. She then
exited her vehicle with the shotgun she's suspected of using to kill her
children before sitting on the sidewalk and being arrested, police said.
"With her in custody, there was no concern that we needed to
move too fast. We looked at the evidence meticulously. We want make
sure we get this right and get some level of justice for this family," Kelly said.
He thanked the family members who came to a news
conference Friday morning in East St. Louis at which Kelly announced the
charges. Smith's family wept.
"We love Yokeia. We will always be
here for her. We do not know why she did what she did or understand it,
either. Sometimes things happen that can't be understood. I know God
will keep us and hold us," said her aunt Martenia Jones.
She asked that the community pray for her family.
"We'll stand together and we'll get through this," Jones said, her voice cracking.
Police officers who worked on the case stood solemnly. Some said they are
still disturbed by the apartment, a crime scene some of them described as a war zone.
"These guys in law enforcement do not get paid
enough," Kelly said. "The crime scene was so horrific and they faced a
heavy, heavy burden. They do it so we don't have to. They will never
forget what they saw that night."
Kelly said there were no other adults in the apartment with Smith during the killings.
He declined to discuss where Smith got the gun or if police knew who the owner was.
Smith will face the charges in Illinois before those in Missouri, which is
standard when St. Louis is involved, Kelly said. He did not say when
Smith would be extradited.
Besides Jones, two other aunts, Gail Jones and Kim Long, and Smith's cousin,
Dawn Triplet, attended the news conference at East St. Louis City Hall. They wiped at tears.
Yokela Smith, 4, and LeVada Brown, 5, were killed by a series of shotgun
blasts inside their apartment. They were pronounced dead at 7:44 p.m.
Wednesday. Smith's 8-year-old son, Xaveious Brown, was at home during
the shootings but ran out of the apartment and escaped.
Police said Smith was armed with the loaded shotgun when she was captured
shortly after the shootings in downtown St. Louis after hitting the man and his son.
The murder charges are punishable by a sentence of natural life in prison.
Multiple law enforcement agencies assisted in the investigation, including East
St. Louis, Illinois State Police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and more.
Kelly said Smith has one prior felony and
several traffic and misdemeanor charges on her criminal history, but
nothing to indicate the potential for the violence seen in her
apartment. He said Smith had spats with neighbors, but again nothing to
indicate a potential for extreme violence.
East St. Louis Police Chief Ranadore Foggs said his officers had contact
with Smith in 2008 involving her children.
"DCFS was part of that discussion. DCFS continued to investigate Smith and her children," he said.
A DCFS spokesman has said the department dealt with Smith involving child
neglect, but a relative got involved with helping her and the children
were never removed from Smith's care. She later refused to work with a
caseworker on her ability to parent.
Funeral services for the children are pending. Donations may be made to Officer Funeral Home,
2114 Missouri Ave. in East St. Louis or at Associated Bank, 326 Missouri Ave. in East St. Louis.

Read more: http://www.bnd.com/2011/09/03/1845243/shes-aware-of-where-she-is-and.html#ixzz1WtRnP9BP

WASHINGTON PARK, Ill. — As their imprisoned father listened by
telephone, a boy and his sister who police say were gunned down by their
mother were laid to rest in a single white casket Thursday after
pastors urged those grieving to turn to scriptures in the absence of
answers about the killings.

Some four dozen mourners, including
the children's 8-year-old brother, gathered for the funeral for
5-year-old Levada Brown III and 4-year-old Yokela Smith. But their
mother, Yokeia Smith, 25, remained jailed on murder charges, accused of
carrying out the killings with close-range shotgun blasts to the
children's heads eight days earlier in the family's East St. Louis
apartment.

The children's father, serving time in a Wisconsin
federal prison for helping rob a southwestern Illinois credit union in
2006, monitored the funeral from behind bars through a telephone handset
perched on the House of Prayer to All Nations' pulpit. He voiced his
anguish in a letter about losing "two angels" that was read at the
funeral.

"The birth of my children has made me the happiest man
alive," Levada Brown Jr. said in the missive read by Jama Burries, an
aunt of the children, from the altar behind the closed casket, which was
covered by a spray of white flowers and flanked by pink, blue and white
helium-filled balloons. "My children are everything to me — the air
that I breathe, the blood in my veins, the strength that gets me up each
morning" while in prison.

"A father is a daughter's first love
and a son's first hero," added Brown, who in pleading guilty to the
robbery that landed him in prison said in court papers that he did the
crime to help support the slain boy as a newborn.

Glossy programs
handed out during the funeral cast the 5-year-old boy as a lover of
football, Western movies, remote-controlled cars and time playing with
his older brother. Young Yokela enjoyed jumping rope, dolls, polishing
her nails, lip gloss, a purse full of change and playing in the park.
Both cherished their grandmothers.

The shotgun killings stunned
many in East St. Louis, a 30,000-resident city that's among the nation's
poorest and where authorities long have lamented that years of gun
violence has claimed too many lives, notably the young. Ministers during
Thursday's funeral seized on that, pressing the latest mourners to
believe the dead siblings were in a better place, free on any challenges
or suffering.

"We still deal with the question of why. Why did
this happen? Why was such a young person taken?" the Rev. Anthony
Pettiford eulogized. "Let me comfort you and tell you that for those
that have that question, you're not alone."

"There's not anything
wrong with wondering why," he went on from the pulpit, near a large
painting of the two kids, depicting them in life back to back and with
arms folded — halos above their heads.

"Jesus is the answer for
every situation. He's in total control of what's going on, and he has a
purpose. He has a reason, and he's making sure you hear the word today,"
Pettiford said.

The name of the children's mother was not
uttered during Thursday's roughly hourlong funeral, though relatives
since the Aug. 31 killings have publicly pledged their support for her,
saying she was bipolar and on anti-depression medication.

"For
another to do that (crime), there must have been something wrong," Gwen
Dew, a 59-year-old aunt of Smith's, said after the funeral. She hoped an
eventual chat with Smith by her grandmother "can make some sense of it.
Right now, we just don't know."

Smith was arrested in St. Louis
the night of the killings after police say her vehicle hit two
pedestrians near the Gateway Arch.

Online court records do not
show whether Smith has an attorney, and it was not immediately clear
when she may be moved from Missouri to Illinois to face the murder
counts.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/08/ap/business/main20103649.shtml

llinois mom charged in 2 kids' deaths denied bond
Associated Press
Posted on September 16, 2011 at 12:35 PM


BELLEVILLE, Ill. (AP) — A judge in southwestern Illinois has denied bond for a woman accused of killing two of her children with a shotgun last month.
Associate St. Clair County Judge Julie Katz entered a not guilty plea on behalf of 25-year-old Yokeia (yoh-KEE'-uh) Smith during a brief arraignment Friday. Katz also appointed a public defender to represent the East St. Louis woman. No new court appearance was scheduled.
Smith is charged with first-degree murder in the Aug. 31 killings of her 5-year-old son and her 4-year-old daughter. She was arrested in St. Louis shortly after the killings when authorities say she hit two pedestrians with her vehicle.
In court Friday, she appeared disheveled and was shackled at her ankles and wrists. She didn't comment as she was escorted from the courtroom.

http://www.wfaa.com/news/national/129963193.html

Yokela Smith, 4, and LeVada Brown, 5