{"id":469838,"date":"2025-12-25T01:50:59","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T01:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/469838\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T01:50:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T01:50:59","slug":"imani-smith-lion-king-child-star-killed-at-26-boyfriend-charged-with-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/469838\/","title":{"rendered":"Imani Smith Lion King Child Star Killed At 26, Boyfriend Charged With Murder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/imani-smith\/\" id=\"auto-tag_imani-smith\" data-tag=\"imani-smith\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Imani Smith<\/a>, who played Young Nala in Disney\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/the-lion-king\/\" id=\"auto-tag_the-lion-king\" data-tag=\"the-lion-king\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Lion King<\/a> on Broadway from 2011-2012, died after being stabbed on December 21, according to the Middlesex, NJ County Prosecutor\u2019s Office. She was 26.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tPolice in Edison, NJ, responding to a 911, call discovered the actress with stab wounds. Per the Middlesex Prosecutor\u2019s Office, Smith was transported to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital where she was pronounced dead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tJordan D. Jackson-Small, 35, was arrested in connection with the death. The prosecutor\u2019s office said only that \u201cSmith and Jackson-Small knew each other prior to the incident, thus it was not a random act of violence.\u201d Smith\u2019s aunt, Kira Helper, said in a GoFundeMe post that Jackson-Small was Smith\u2019s boyfriend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tJackson-Small was arrested \u201cwithout incident\u201d and charged with first-degree Murder, second-degree Endangering the Welfare of a Child, third-degree Possession of a Weapon for an Unlawful Purpose and fourth-degree Unlawful Possession of a Weapon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tThe <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gofundme.com\/f\/support-the-helper-family-after-the-tragic-loss-of-imani-dia?attribution_id=sl%3A562fc8be-1f68-4c6d-8ff3-f7be4f9d2613&amp;lang=en_US&amp;ts=1766418694&amp;utm_campaign=fp_sharesheet&amp;utm_content=amp17_tb&amp;utm_medium=customer&amp;utm_source=copy_link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GoFundMe page<\/a> had a target of $55,000 to support Imani\u2019s parents,\u201d who are \u201cgrieving their daughter while stepping in to raise her young son and support their two other children during this traumatic time.\u201d As of this writing, $47,000 had been raised.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tSmith is survived by her 3-year-old son, her parents Monique Rance-Helper and Rawni Helper, her aunt and two younger siblings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imani Smith, who played Young Nala in Disney\u2019s The Lion King on Broadway from 2011-2012, died after being&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":469839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,213459,92806,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-469838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-imani-smith","10":"tag-the-lion-king","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115777705322023878","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}