Dad may be on trial date next month; charged with beating 8-year-old son nearly to death with baseball bat (Redding, California)

We've reported on this case before. Dad GEOFFREY SCOTT KELLY has now given up his right to a preliminary hearing. Daddy is accused of beating his 8-year-old son nearly to death with an aluminum baseball bat. This POS attacked this boy when he was sleeping. Unfreaking believable. And though the boy has survived, he faces serious disabilities and health issues, including brain injuries and paralysis. Note that Daddy has a violent criminal history as well.

http://www.redding.com/news/2011/feb/23/father-beaten-boy-may-get-trial-date-set-next-mont/

Father of beaten boy may get trial date set next month
By Record Searchlight staff
Record Searchlight
Posted February 23, 2011 at 3:06 p.m., updated February 23, 2011 at 3:06 p.m.

A Redding man accused of beating his 8-year-old son nearly to death with an aluminum baseball bat gave up his legal right to a preliminary hearing today.

Geoffrey Scott Kelly, who earlier this month was deemed mentally competent to stand trial in Shasta County Superior Court, has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of attempted murder and child abuse, as well as a series of special enhancements.

Kelly, 53, potentially faces life in prison if convicted of the charges against him. His trial date may be set on March 14.

Although Kelly has been found mentally fit to stand trial following a mental health evaluation, his appointed Redding defense attorney said today that he has not ruled out an insanity defense for him.

“Mental health is still at issue in the case,” said attorney Adam Ryan.

Redding police officers were called to Kelly’s California Street apartment on Jan. 5 after receiving reports of a bleeding and unconscious boy who had been attacked there while he was sleeping.

Police said that Kelly told them he snapped and twice hit the boy with the bat, according to a police report released last month.

“I lost it,” Kelly reportedly told an officer. “I just lost it.”

The boy, who at one point had been listed in critical condition at U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, has shown improvement and is now listed in fair condition.

Shasta County Deputy District Attorney Curtis Woods, who is prosecuting Kelly, said today that the boy is “responding to outside stimuli” and has some movement in his fingers and arms, but not his legs.

He said it’s not known if the child will recover from his paralysis.

“They have no idea what’s in store for him,” he said.

Among the enhancements filed against Kelly is one claiming he caused great bodily injury, including brain injury and paralysis, to his son.

Although police have said Kelly has admitted to hitting the boy with the baseball bat, his mental state at the time of the alleged beating would be the key factor should the case go to trial.

“I don’t know what was going through his mind,” Woods said.

Before the alleged attack, the Redding police report said, Kelly told his wife that he believed the Mafia was out to get him. She told police he had been acting “weird.”

The boy’s mother, identified as Heather Sieglock, told police she woke up shortly before 7 a.m., on Jan. 5 and found her husband sitting in a living room chair holding the baseball bat, which they kept for protection.

When she asked him why he was sitting there holding a bat, Kelly did not reply, the police report said, and she returned to bed.

Their son, she told police, slept in a purple sleeping bag beside their bed, and she woke up after hearing a noise. She said she saw Kelly standing over their bleeding son holding the bat.

Sieglock said she frantically picked up the boy and was carrying him toward the home’s front door when Kelly again hit the boy in the head with the bat, the police report said. Kelly did not speak during the entire time, the report said.

She then began yelling for help and ran to a neighbor’s home, the report said.

Kelly, who police have said has a criminal history that includes willful injury to a child in Santa Clara County in the late 1980s and several assault charges, shoved a knife into his own chest during a confrontation last year with police in which he was arrested for threatening officers with a hammer.