DA: Ma beat tots on back-to-back nights

A Bronx mother accused of killing her two toddlers brutally beat the helpless kids inside their apartment on back-to-back nights in July 2017, prosecutors alleged Friday.

Suspect Jade Spencer, looking a little worse for the wear after her Thursday arrest in New Jersey, was held on $250,000 bond or $100,000 cash bail pending a Tuesday return to Bronx Criminal Court. She was charged with manslaughter and assault in the deaths of her battered kids Micah Gee, 3, and Olivia Gee, 2, who died just three minutes apart at Montefiore Medical Center on July 10, 2017.

“Jade Spencer was their mother, and she was supposed to protect them,” said Assistant District Attorney Jill Starishevsky. “But this mother ended up being their biggest threat.”

Autopsies by the city medical examiner determined the siblings suffered from similar injuries caused by blunt force trauma to their tiny torsos inside the eighth-floor Van Cortlandt Park South apartment, according to a criminal complaint. Each child was killed by internal bleeding from a lacerated liver inflicted in the late hours of July 9, 2017.

And each child also showed evidence of a similar injury suffered the night before that also left the doomed pair with bleeding livers, authorities charged. Spencer was home alone with the siblings on both nights, and she found the two dying kids in their bedroom around 1:15 a.m. — with Micah struggling to breathe and his kid sister unresponsive.

Spencer then called 911, according to authorities.

Authorities provided no motive for the alleged beatings of the small kids. Spencer, 33, who moved from the Bronx to Bloomfield, N.J., was arrested Wednesday in the Garden State and said nothing during her court appearance.

“The cause of death of both of these two children is blunt impact injuries to the torso,” said prosecutor Starishevsky. “Each child had injuries to the liver that occurred on two separate occasions about 24 hours apart.”

According to the criminal complaint, the defendant was the “sole caretaker” of the kids for the evening hours when they were twice assaulted. The internal bleeding caused by their injuries were responsible for both deaths, the medical examiner ruled.

Defense attorney David Bertan, in arguing for lower bail, noted that Spencer was the mother of a 1-year-old child and never fled the jurisdiction despite the twoyear investigation into her possible role in the death of her two older kids.

The suspect’s mom, sitting in the courtroom, sat quietly throughout the hearing and declined to speak after her daughter was led away. Bertan similarly said nothing beyond his comments at the hearing.