{"id":231092,"date":"2026-06-29T17:47:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T17:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/231092\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T17:47:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T17:47:31","slug":"lower-macungie-couple-accused-of-starving-twins-wants-change-of-venue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/231092\/","title":{"rendered":"Lower Macungie couple accused of starving twins wants change of venue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Lower Macungie Township couple <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/2025\/01\/27\/lower-macungie-endangerment\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">accused of attempting to fatally starve 15-year-old twin boys in their care<\/a> say they can\u2019t get a fair trial because of \u201cpervasive, widespread, inflammatory and sustained media coverage,\u201d and are asking for a change of venue.<\/p>\n<p>Tracy Dechant, 43, the boys\u2019 mother, and her husband, Joshua Dechant, 37, filed the motion this month in Lehigh County Court. If granted, their trial would be moved to another county, or a jury from a different county would be brought in to decide their case.<\/p>\n<p>In the motion, they complained that the local jury pool is tainted due to frequent news coverage, and noted that their case \u201chas also drawn significant attention on social media sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The case began in January 2025 when one of the twins knocked on the door of a neighbor\u2019s house asking for food, police said. The teens told authorities that they endured punishments including standing outside naked in the freezing cold and being denied food and water, according to court records.<\/p>\n<p>When admitted to the hospital, one brother weighed approximately 53 pounds and the other weighed approximately 55 pounds. Doctors said boys of their size and age should weigh 110-143 pounds.<\/p>\n<p>The Dechants are charged with aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit third-degree murder and other charges. They are free on bail.<\/p>\n<p>In a related motion, the couple asked that a judge force the prosecution to provide specific details about the charge of conspiracy to commit third-degree murder, specifically the \u201cmedical diagnosis alleged to have been caused by the defendant\u2019s alleged intentional malicious act,\u201d and \u201cthe proximate amount of time before the victim would have been killed as a result of the defendant\u2019s alleged intentional malicious act.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Dechants have a pretrial hearing scheduled before Judge James T. Anthony on July 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Lower Macungie Township couple accused of attempting to fatally starve 15-year-old twin boys in their care say&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,2376,202,433,182,139,28,432],"class_list":["post-231092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}