Mother: Intruder sought help
The man shot by police after a City Hall break-in had called from a hospital, she said. She called him "delusional."
Charles Love Kelley, the man who burglarized City Hall early Sunday and then was fatally shot by police while he was holding a knife and a Bible, may have been trying to seek psychiatric help within hours of his death, his mother said yesterday.
Kelley, 26, had moved from Panama City, Fla., to Philadelphia recently with a girlfriend and was not behaving abnormally until last Saturday, said Kelley's mother, Trashell Washington, 43.
Washington said the girlfriend, whom she only knows as Tashia, had gone home to Panama City but was planning to return to Philadelphia. Tashia received a call about midnight Saturday from Kelley, who said he was calling from a hospital.
He told her that "they won't let him go in," said Washington, 43. "He was talking all loud" and then his girlfriend heard a nurse in the background say, "Sir, you're going to have to leave."
She said she did not know the name of the hospital from which the call was placed.
Sometime between then and 2 a.m. Sunday, Kelley climbed four floors of scaffolding outside City Hall, broke in through a window, and scrawled religious messages in several offices, including one used by Council President Anna C. Verna. He took a Bible and a serrated knife and left.
About 2 a.m., he was confronted by police at Ninth and Market Streets. Police said they tried to stun him twice with a Taser gun, but could not subdue him.
According to police, he screamed, "Kill me! Kill me!" and charged toward the officers, who then shot and killed him.
Washington, who lives in Decatur, Ga., said her son told his girlfriend that he woke up on Saturday and that "God was talking to him."
Kelley's mother condemned the police shooting as an overreaction.
"Do you kill delusional people?" she asked.
"If he did wrong, I wouldn't complain," she said. "But if he lost his mind, he shouldn't die."
Kelley was born in New York and lived with his mother and siblings there, in West Virginia, and finally in Panama City, on Florida's panhandle.
He finished the 11th grade in West Virginia, then dropped out because he had fathered a child, Washington said. He leaves behind two daughters.
In Panama City, his mother acknowledged, he got into frequent trouble with police.
According to county records, he was convicted of criminal mischief, petty theft, loitering and prowling. He spent various short stints in jail. He had unpaid traffic tickets.
Court records alternately refer to him as Kelley and Kelly. On a state Web site, which has his photograph, he is identified as Charles Kelly, height 5-foot-10, weight 180 pounds.
Most recently, he was convicted of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and battery. He was placed on probation, which prohibited him from leaving Florida.
The girlfriend told Washington that her son moved to Philadelphia "to start over." The girlfriend did not say where they were living.
The body of "Love," as his family knew him, remains at the Medical Examiner's Office, and his mother said she did not know if she would be able to take her son home.
"Basically, I don't have the money to get Charles," she said.
Washington said she last saw her son in Panama City shortly before Christmas. He asked for her help in getting permission from the state to move to Georgia to be with her, she said.
She said she gave her son a necklace with a cross and put it around his neck.
Last Wednesday, he called her and said he wanted to come to Georgia, but she had no idea he was calling from Philadelphia.
"I said, 'Where's my cross?' " she recalled.
He said he was wearing it.
"He hit it against the phone so I could hear it," she said.
"And I said, 'You need to be safe.' "