{"id":2212469,"date":"2025-12-26T04:28:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T04:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2212469"},"modified":"2025-12-26T04:28:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T04:28:21","slug":"former-lion-king-child-actor-killed-by-brutal-act-police-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/former-lion-king-child-actor-killed-by-brutal-act-police-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Former ‘Lion King’ Child Actor Killed By Brutal Act, Police Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Imani Dia Smith<\/a>, who appeared in \u201cThe Lion King<\/a>\u201d on Broadway<\/a> as a young stage actor, died after she was stabbed at a residence in Edison, New Jersey, police and prosecutors said in a joint news release<\/a> on Tuesday. She was 25, according to a GoFundMe created by her aunt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Police responded to a 911 call Monday morning and found Smith with stab wounds, according to the release. She was taken to a hospital where she was declared dead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone and Edison Police Chief Thomas Bryan announced that a suspect, Jordan D. Jackson-Small, 35, of Edison, had been arrested and charged with first-degree murder, second-degree endangering of a child, third-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and fourth-degree unlawful possession of a weapon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Smith and Jackson-Small knew each other before the incident, officials said. TMZ reported<\/a> the suspect was her boyfriend, as did a GoFundMe<\/a> to support Smith\u2019s family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Smith played Young Nala in \u201cThe Lion King\u201d from Sept. 27, 2011, to Sept. 23, 2012, Playbill reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She is survived by her parents, two younger siblings and her 3-year-old son, according to the GoFundMe page.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imani Dia Smith, who appeared in \u201cThe Lion King\u201d on Broadway as a young stage actor, died after she was stabbed at a residence in Edison, New Jersey, police and prosecutors said in a joint news release on Tuesday. She was 25, according to a GoFundMe created by her aunt. Police responded to a 911 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2212470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[344468,354777],"class_list":["post-2212469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-broadway","tag-lion-king"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Former-Lion-King-Child-Actor-Killed-By-Brutal-Act-Police.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2212469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2212471,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212469\/revisions\/2212471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2212470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2212469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2212469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2212469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}