{"id":9968,"date":"2011-09-19T15:06:12","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T19:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=9968"},"modified":"2011-09-19T13:59:05","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T17:59:05","slug":"illinois-mom-charged-in-2-kids-deaths-denied-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=9968","title":{"rendered":"Illinois Mom Charged In 2 Kids&#8217; Deaths Denied Bond"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>BELLEVILLE, Ill.<\/strong> &#8212; An Illinois woman accused of gunning down two of her children was denied bail and granted a public defender Friday before being led in shackles back to the jail and isolated confinement under suicide watch.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Yokeia Smith<\/strong> faces two counts of first-degree murder. Associate St. Clair County <strong>Judge Julie Katz<\/strong> entered a not guilty plea on the 25-year-old&#8217;s behalf during Friday&#8217;s brief arraignment. A day earlier, the single mother of three agreed to be returned to Illinois from St. Louis, where she was arrested shortly after the Aug. 31 killings.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities say<strong> Smith<\/strong> killed her 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter with close-range shotgun blasts to the head in their East St. Louis apartment. Smith&#8217;s 8-year-old son escaped unharmed and is in the custody of relatives.<\/p>\n<p>Investigators have offered no details about what may have motivated the killings.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Smith&#8217;s<\/strong> relatives have publicly pledged their support for her, saying she was bipolar and on anti-depression medication. <strong>Smith&#8217;s<\/strong> lengthy criminal background includes a litany of traffic offenses and various instances of assault and battery, most of them misdemeanors that authorities have suggested were not indicators that<strong> Smith&#8217;s<\/strong> legal troubles would escalate to murder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BELLEVILLE, Ill. &#8212; An Illinois woman accused of gunning down two of her children was denied bail and granted a public defender Friday before being led in shackles back to the jail and isolated confinement under suicide watch. Yokeia Smith faces two counts of first-degree murder. Associate St. Clair County Judge Julie Katz entered a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}