Update: hearing delayed for Tacony mother in deaths of twins
Stacey Newkirk Smalls' hearing set for Sept. 11
The preliminary hearing for Stacey Newkirk Smalls -- the 41-year-old Tacony woman charged with murdering her infant twins and poisoning her 4-year-old daughter in a reported rage over her husband's affair -- has been postponed to Sept. 11.
At a hearing Wednesday before Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Dawn A. Segal, Smalls' family said it was trying to come up with money to hire a defense attorney but were not sure it was possible. Segal agreed to postpone the hearing but warned Smalls' family they had to be ready for the hearing on Sept. 11 with their own lawyer or lawyers from the Philadelphia public defender's office.
Smalls, a nurse who worked at a nursing home, was arrested May 24 after her husband, Ron Smalls, came home to their Ditman Street house to find the 18-month old twins dead, the older daughter unconscious and his wife bleeding from the wrists after an apparent suicide attempt.