WOODLAND — Loud, disruptive noises are nothing new at the Great Value Inn, a low-budget motel on West Sacramento’s West Capitol Avenue.
Still, when the racket began at about 4:20 a.m. on June 17, Theo Brown and his wife went to their window to find the source of the commotion.
“I looked out the window and seen this person throwing a whole bunch of stuff out the window,” including water, a toilet seat and toilet paper, Brown testified Wednesday in Yolo Superior Court. Then came a woman’s voice, “saying something like, ‘Good boy, daddy — you’re being a good boy, daddy.’ ”
Brown said his wife also heard a man saying, ” ‘open the window’ or ‘open the door,’ or something,”
From there, the couple went to the front door of their second-story room where, according to Brown, he and his wife observed a woman beating a motionless body near the motel lobby.
She was “having a tantrum,” Brown recalled, striking the person’s head repeatedly with a rod or a stick. The woman then seized a brick and used that as her weapon, dropping it from chest height onto the person’s head at least twice that Brown could see.
“I was shocked,” he said. “She just kept on bam, bam, bam, big ol’ brick. …The body wasn’t moving at all.”
By the end of Wednesday’s hearing — the last of a three-day proceeding — Judge David Reed found sufficient evidence for 26-year-old Kelly Dema Carew of Placerville to stand trial on a single count of murder.
Her alleged victim has been identified as Herbert Ublic Rhodes Jr., 60, who authorities said had recently been staying at the Great Value Inn. His relationship to Carew, if any, has not been disclosed.
Brown said on the witness stand that he had never met Rhodes or Carew, but he recognized Carew from the beating scene and identified her in court.
Dressed in a green-and-white striped Yolo County Jail jumpsuit, Carew appeared unusually animated before the start of Wednesday’s hearing, smiling frequently and chatting up her court-appointed public defenders on topics such as coffee and hair-care products.
West Sacramento police have said Carew does not have a significant criminal history and they had not encountered her before her arrest outside the West Sacramento motel, where she was acting erratically and was spattered in blood from the alleged beating.
Sacramento Superior Court records show Carew has one prior criminal case from 2010 charging her with being under the influence of a controlled substance, for which she was sentenced to three years’ probation and three months in jail.
Rhodes, a Sacramento resident, also a record of drug-related arrests in 1999 and 2000, followed by a speeding ticket in 2004, according to Yolo court records.
Carew, who previously has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, is due back in court at 9 a.m. July 23 for arraignment. In the meantime, she is being held without bail at the Yolo County Jail.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene