Nydira Smith testifies in her trial for Lincoln University student murder case

WEST CHESTER — The woman who stabbed three men, one fatally, during a dormitory brawl at Lincoln University testified Tuesday that she had brought a knife with her to the campus for protection, but that she had no plans to use it until she was attacked.

“Did you bring that knife into that dorm intending to use it?” defense attorney Gregory Pagano asked defendant Nydira Smith during his direct examination of her on the sixth day of testimony of her homicide trial in Chester County Common Pleas Court.

“Absolutely not,” Smith answered confidently as the jury of six men and six women in Judge Nicole Forzato’s courtroom listened.

But on cross-examination by the lead prosecutor in the case, Smith said that she had not seen any other weapons being used in the fight that involved her younger brother and other Lincoln students he had been fighting with earlier the day of the stabbing, even though she was concerned that she might be killed in the melee  — but only because she had been punched.

“Do you believe you could have died, and do you believe he could have died,” Deputy District Attorney Bridget Gallagher asked Smith, referring to her brother, Malik Stevens, who had called her to come to the campus in southern Chester County because he had been “jumped’ by several men.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Smith said at first, while later altering her answer. “I believe I could have died by being attacked by men. They were punching me.”

Smith’s state of mind at the time of the stabbing, which left Lincoln senior Jawine Evans dead and two other students wounded, is important because she is claiming, through her attorneys, that she acted in self-defense, even though there were no other deadly weapons used in the brawl.

She is asserting the “imperfect self-defense” theory, which holds that a defendant accused of homicide can be found not guilty, or guilty of a lesser offense than first-degree murder if they were honestly acting under the mistaken belief that their life was in jeopardy and they needed to protect themselves with deadly force.

Previous testimony in the trial, which began last week, indicated that Stevens had let his sister know that one of his assailants had threatened to bring a gun — a “four-pounder” in street slang — to a future fight and that he needed to get off campus before being confronted again. But in her testimony, Smith said nothing about thinking that there would be a gun involved in the incident.

Smith, 40, was arrested on Feb. 23, 2022, less than a week after the Feb. 16, 2022 stabbing. She 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.

In her questioning by Pagano, Smith introduced herself as a 2005 graduate of Lincoln, where she studied chemistry. Until a few days before her arrest, she worked as an operations manager at a Philadelphia healthcare company and lived alone in the East Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia.

A devout Muslim, she wore a traditional headscarf — a khimar — and a black overgarment under a gray blazer while on the witness stand. Before she began testifying, more than a dozen of her friends, family, and colleagues told the jury that she had a reputation for being a truthful, law-abiding, and non-violent person.

But Smith acknowledged that she regularly carried a knife with her at all times to protect herself. The knife she used in the Lincoln stabbing was, however, not a folding or military knife, but a 6-inch steak knife she had retrieved from her kitchen.

She said she got a call from Stevens on the evening of Feb. 16, asking her to come pick him up at the school in Lower Oxford Township. She and her sister drove there and parked outside the Thurgood Marshal Living and Learning Center, where she herself had lived while she was a student. They went inside, ready to help Stevens load his belongings into the car.

But once inside, she became aware that there was a commotion in the hallway and said she saw a group of as many as 10 men coming toward her, her sister, Stevens, and his two friends — Christopher Houston and Justice Ray. She tried to quell the coming disturbance, she testified, by stretching out her arms and telling the men they did not have to fight.

“I said this is not necessary,” she said. “We’re not going to do this.”

That calmed things down for a moment, until she told the men, “You are in college to learn, not to fight,” and one of her brother’s foes, Clifton Walker, cursed at her and punched her in the face. With the fight on, she said her knife dropped out of her sweatshirt, and she picked it up by the blade, cutting herself. Then, she grabbed the handle and started swinging it at people.

Smith contended that she did not know she had stabbed Evans, but that she did recall stabbing Walker and the third man, Eric Dickerson.

“I was swinging wildly,” she said.

When the fight died down as Evans staggered away, bleeding profusely from his neck, the group of them then left the dorm. Later, Smith said she stopped her car and her sister took the knife she was holding and threw it out the window.

In her exhaustive cross-examination, Gallagher pressed Smith not only on her actions that night but in the days afterward, when she knew that someone at Lincoln had died and it was clear that she was the person responsible.

Smith said she had gone to the hospital to have her cut hand treated but had not told anyone where she was wounded. She did not stop when she saw emergency vehicles going to Lincoln’s entrance and did not talk about the stabbings on the way back to Philadelphia with her brother and sister.

In addition, Gallagher brought out that Smith had contacted people the next day about finding an attorney, resigned from her job without notice citing unspecified “legal issues” she needed to deal with, had stopped using her regular phone and purchased a new one, and had gone to a hotel in Plymouth Meeting rather than stay at home, where she said she might be bothered by police.

Gallagher repeatedly brought up the fact that Smith had not gone to the police to tell her side of the story, and did not turn herself in until a warrant had been issued for her arrest by Chester County Detective John Battista.  But that line of questions brought an objection by defense attorney Vince DiFabio, and Forzato ultimately instructed the jurors not to take her failure to go to the police into account.

Smith also said she had not discussed her role in the fight with the members of her family that night, even as they received word from the school that someone had died, and a video of the melee began circulating.

“Did you tell them you were involved in that fight?” Gallagher asked.

“I don’t think I said that,” she answered.

“Did you tell them you stabbed the deceased?” the prosecutor continued.

“No,” Smith said.

To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.