A 34-year-old man already serving a six-year sentence for a brutal 2023 attack on his ex-girlfriend in Laguna Beach has now pleaded guilty to a separate assault on a man, one he committed months before he ever showed up at her home. Charles Thomas Kelley IV admitted to assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and an accompanying sentencing enhancement for inflicting that injury, landing him four additional years in prison that will run concurrently with his earlier sentence.
Kelley pleaded guilty on September 11 to attacking his ex-girlfriend, according to MyNewsLA.com, which reported he was sentenced to six years in prison for that case and will receive credit for 1,457 days already served behind bars. The assault on the man, which led to this week's guilty plea, happened on January 21, 2023 — months before the Laguna Beach attack — and had already produced an active Orange County felony arrest warrant for Kelley by the time he turned up on Tahiti Avenue that April, according to Patch.
A Night of Escalating Violence on Tahiti Avenue
The night before the April 19, 2023 attack, Kelley came to his ex-girlfriend's home, argued with her, took her phone and vehicle, and left. After she locked the doors, he returned and broke into her living room through a sliding door in the 1600 block of Tahiti Avenue, per the account relayed by MyNewsLA.com. He struck her in the face multiple times. She fled and hid near a tree for about 30 minutes before returning home, only for Kelley to choke her in the garage. She then hid at a neighbor's home for another 30 minutes, but when she came back, Kelley punched her in the stomach and face, dragged her into a bedroom, and choked her again until she nearly blacked out. The victim suffered a broken pinky finger before someone called 911.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Kelley was in the hospital and, upon discharge, was expected to be booked on suspicion of attempted murder and other charges. MyNewsLA.com reported that Kelley pleaded guilty to corporal injury on a cohabitant and criminal threats, while charges of torture and kidnapping were dismissed. Kelley admitted a sentencing enhancement for causing great bodily injury in the domestic violence case as part of his plea.
Caught by Paramedics Who Recognized His Face
In the days after the attack, police sought the public's help locating Kelley, prompting Laguna Beach Police to place nearby Thurston Middle School and Laguna Beach High School on precautionary alert, according to KFI AM 640. Kelley's capture came down to luck and recognition: paramedics with the Long Beach Fire Department spotted him while transporting him for an unrelated injury, having seen his photo circulated to the media two days earlier. He was arrested at a Long Beach hospital at 3 a.m. on April 21, 2023.
Court records describe Kelley as having a lengthy criminal history, and his file includes a knife-point robbery at an ATM in Irvine and a police chase in Newport Beach, both dated March 19, 2021, along with a 2016 aggravated battery conviction out of San Diego County. That Irvine case traces back even further: in December 2014, Kelley held a knife to a victim's throat during a drive-up ATM robbery at a Wells Fargo, according to the Irvine Police Department. Kelley wasn't arrested for that robbery until March 2017, after an FBI CODIS DNA match linked blood on the victim's shirt to a sample collected from Kelley following an August 2016 arrest in San Diego.
What the Enhancement Means for His Sentence
The great bodily injury enhancement Kelley admitted carries real statutory weight. Under California Penal Code Section 12022.7, that enhancement adds a mandatory consecutive prison term of three to six years to an underlying felony conviction and converts the crime into a strike under the state's Three Strikes law, according to the Hedding Law Firm. Separately, Penal Code Section 245(a)(4), covering assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, classifies the offense as a wobbler punishable as a felony by two, three, or four years in state prison, per FindLaw.
According to prosecutors' court papers, after noticing the victim open a bathroom window, Kelley said something along the lines of, “I see what you're trying to do there.” His case lands amid broader statewide trends: California law enforcement agencies responded to more than 160,000 domestic violence calls in 2023, with statewide data showing a rise in domestic violence incidents involving aggravated assault over recent years, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
