Competency hearing set for mother

Dan Kulin

Monday, Oct. 6, 2003 | 11:28 a.m.

The mother accused of beating her two children to death with a baseball bat is scheduled to appear in district court Thursday to determine if she is competent to stand trial.

North Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Stephen Dahl decided the competency hearing was necessary after being presented with two mental health reports that say Sylvia Ewing, 39, is mentally unfit to stand trial.

Joseph Abood, deputy public defender who is representing Ewing, said this morning's hearing was an important first step to a legal certification about Ewing's mental competency.

"These reports are so overwhelming," Abood said this morning. "They say she is incompetent, clearly."

Abood said he will ask District Judge Joseph Bonaventure to send Ewing to Lakes Crossing, a state mental facility in Sparks where she will undergo psychiatric treatment until she is deemed mentally fit to stand trial.

If Ewing is declared mentally incompetent, the two murder charges against her will be put on hold until she is declared competent.

Ewing is charged with two counts of murder with a deadly weapon in connection with the deaths of her children, Phillip, 8, and Julie, 4, in their apartment on Las Vegas Boulevard North across from Nellis Air Force Base.

In the reports Abood presented this morning in court, a psychiatrist who evaluated Ewing said she is "acutely psychotic," has "auditory hallucinations" and a psychologist said she suffers from a "delusional disorder," Abood said.

Abood said that he met with Ewing over the past week, and she doesn't fully understand what had happened.

"She knows she's in a bad place and that she's in trouble for something she did," Abood said. "She still asks for her children, asks who's taking care of them."

Ewing had been prescribed anti-psychotitc and antidepressant medication in the past, Abood said, but last week he said she stopped taking them because they made her feel dizzy.

In court a week ago Ewing cried and said she loved her son and daughter and wanted to be with them. Ewing's attorneys, Abood and Scott Coffee had to explain to Ewing that she was in court because she stands accused of killing her children, Abood said.

Ewing's husband, Daryl, told police that she had been treated for mental illness; police and friends said she suffered from depression. She had been hospitalized at Monte Vista and was seeing a psychiatrist regularly.

According to police, in the early morning hours of Sept. 23, Ewing took her children to a Wal-Mart, bought a baseball bat, took them home and allegedly beat them to death with the bat.

Police said Ewing then stepped in front of a tractor-trailer in an apparent suicide attempt. Daryl Ewing, the children's father, found them dead in their apartment when he returned home from his truck driving job that afternoon.

Ewing was released from the hospital on Sept. 28 and booked into the Clark County Detention Center.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Vickie Monroe said last week that a panel of prosecutors will determine if the state will seek the death penalty against Ewing.