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WEST CHESTER — The prosecution in the case of Nydira Smith on Wednesday played a brief video of the melee inside a dormitory at Lincoln University in which three men were stabbed, one of them fatally, by Smith, in an act of aggression or self-defense, depending on which side is telling the story.
While the video – taken on a smart phone by a fellow dorm resident of the people in the scrum – lasted less than 30 seconds, its impact on those who knew the deceased victim was immediate and powerful.
The mother of victim Jawine Evans, Beverly Evans Battle, seated in the front row of Judge Nicole Forzato’s courtroom, gasped and began weeping as she watched it on a large screen across from the jury, comforted by those seated with her. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue as the video played again and again as witnesses tried to describe what was happening in it.
“Ooh,” exclaimed witness Clifton Walker, a close friend of Evans, known as “Juan,” as he watched his classmate stagger away from the group of men throwing punches, bleeding so profusely that blotches of blood appear on the tiled floor of the dorm hallway. Walker scratched his eye to keep from tearing up, and momentarily kept his head down to avoid seeing the video.
What could only be barely seen in the clip was the blaze of the knife that Smith, sister of one of the men in the fight, Malik Stevens, wielded in the middle of the group. But it is uncontested that she stabbed Evans in the neck, stabbed Walker in the back, and also stabbed fellow student Eric Dickerson multiple times in the arm and chest.
In fact, Evans can be heard on the cell phone video cursing and exclaiming, “She stabbed me” as he walks out of the frame in the hallway.
Evans, 21, of Philadelphia, a senior at the school and was about to graduate, died in a grassy area outside the Thurgood Marshall Living and Learning Center the night of Feb. 16, 2022. The artery in his neck had been severed, and although his friends tried to stop the bleeding, they were unsuccessful.
“We tried to get him some help, but we couldn’t,” Walker said during his testimony. “It was just too much. It was too much blood.”
Deputy District Attorney Bridget Gallagher, who is leading the prosecutor, asked Walker about those minutes outside the dorm. “To the best of your knowledge, was he still alive?” while people were gathered around him calling for help. “Yes,” Walker answered, quietly.
Smith, 40, who lived in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia at the time of the stabbing, is charged with first-degree and third-degree murder, possessing an instrument of a crime, four counts of aggravated assault and other related charges. She has been held in Chester County Prison without bail awaiting trial since her arrest, a few days after Evans’ death.
If convicted of first-degree murder, she would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. Her defense team — DiFabio and Philadelphia attorney Gregory Pagano — are asking that she be found not guilty because she acted in self-defense.
The confrontation that led to Evans’ death had begun earlier that evening, according to Walker, now 23 and working at Jefferson Hospital while waiting to finish his degree at Lincoln. Smith’s brother, Stevens, had been suspected of stealing from one of Walker’s friends, Taj McIntosh. At some point, Walker, Dickerson and McIntosh confronted Stevens and another man, Chris Houston, in the first floor of the dorm they all lived in.
During that scuffle, Walker said, a few punches were thrown and the men just traded insults. But later that evening he returned to the dorm, he saw a larger group of men, including Stevens, in the hallway outside his door. He went to get Evans, McIntosh and Dickerson. The two sides grappled in the hallway.
At some point in the evening, Stevens called his sister, Smith, at her home and told him he as having problems wit others on campus. She said she would come pick him up, and called security at the school to advise them of the situation and tell them she was on her way to get her brother.
She and her sister arrived and she went inside the dorm and joined in the fray. Walker said he could hear a female he did not know shout something about not fighting with her brother.
Walker said he did not see any other weapon in the melee, and did not even see the knife that Smith had and stabbed him with. Smith’s attorneys contend that McIntosh had threatened to retrieve a “four pounder” – slang for a gun – after the first fight.
The video of the fight was filmed by a dorm resident who hear a commotion outside his room. Angelo “AJ” Greene, of Willingboro, N.J., a Lincoln graduate, said he did not see any weapons during the fight, and did not know which side had started the brawl. He stood back and watched and filmed as Evans walked by him, spurting blood from his neck.
“At first I thought it was something where someone got his nose licked,” Greene, who said he was testifying against his will. “Until he said he got stabbed.”
Greene, who slouched on the witness stand and gave many of his answers in one or two words, said he had grabbed a towel and tried to help Evans after he went outside and collapsed on the ground.
“Were you there with him when he died?” Gallagher asked.
“I’ve witnessed stuff like that before, so I kind of knew.”
Greene said he and his fellow dorm residents were kept out of their rooms for much of the night, and that police confiscated his phone after he told them he had filmed what happened. When he returned later the next day, the floor had been cleaned of the blood, he said.
Testimony is expected to resume Thursday.
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