{"id":475518,"date":"2025-12-27T19:16:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T19:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/475518\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T19:16:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T19:16:15","slug":"former-lion-king-broadway-actress-dead-at-age-26-following-new-jersey-stabbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/475518\/","title":{"rendered":"Former \u2018Lion King\u2019 Broadway actress dead at age 26 following New Jersey stabbing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former Broadway child actress was appeared in \u201cThe Lion King\u201d died on Sunday after she was stabbed at her New Jersey home, according to published reports quoting New Jersey officials.<\/a><\/p>\n

Imani Dia Smith, 26, was found with stab wounds after authorities responded to a call at her home in Edison, N.J. She was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., where she was pronounced dead. <\/p>\n

USA Today<\/a> reports Jordan Jackson-Small, 35, was arrested soon after without incident. The Middlesex County Prosecutor\u2019s Office said he and Smith \u201cknew each other\u201d and a GoFundMe<\/a> page identified Jackson-Small as Smith\u2019s boyfriend, according to published reports. <\/p>\n

He has been 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. There has been no indication of what led to the stabbing or if others were present at the time. <\/p>\n

Smith played Young Nala in the long-running Disney Broadway production from Sept. 27, 2011, to Sept. 23, 2012. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Broadway child actress was appeared in \u201cThe Lion King\u201d died on Sunday after she was stabbed…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":475519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[19607,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-475518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-broadway","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115793139504256706","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475518","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=475518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}