Attempted murder and other charges were filed Thursday against an Irvine man who allegedly went outside while nude and attacked a 75- year-old neighbor without provocation while she was walking her dog.
Craig Andrew Ledbetter, 51, is charged with attempted murder, with sentence-enhancing allegations of premeditation and deliberation, and personal injury to a victim 70 or older.
He also faces felony charges of inflicting injury on an elder adult and battery with serious bodily injury, and misdemeanor charges of cruelty to animals and resisting arrest.
The defendant could face up to 12 years to life in prison if convicted, according to Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Duke.
Ledbetter, who’s being held in lieu of $50,000 bail, had been scheduled to be arraigned Thursday at the Central Jail in Santa Ana, but the proceeding was postponed until Friday for unspecified medical reasons.
Police responded to a call of a “man acting strangely on Rockwood Street” about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to Irvine police Lt. Bill Whalen. Officers found the suspect naked and “swinging a stick aggressively,” he said, adding that they ultimately had to subdue Ledbetter with a stun gun.
The victim, who remains hospitalized, lives several houses away from the suspect. Her son-in-law, Neil Fitzsimons, said the family moved to the neighborhood three months ago.
He told ABC7 the suspect had been yelling expletives just before his mother-in-law was attacked from behind and knocked to the ground.
Her attacker “punched her repeatedly in the chest, knocked her to the ground, apparently sat on top of her naked,” Fitzsimons said Wednesday. “Her eyes are swollen shut. She can’t see; she’s essentially blind at the moment.”
The victim was treated for bleeding in the brain, according to Roxi Fyad of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. She also suffered a dislocated left arm and eye injuries, Fyad said.
The suspect allegedly took the woman’s black poodle and swung the dog over his shoulder, Fyad said. The animal escaped and was found unharmed late Tuesday night and returned to the family.
Whalen said officers had stopped Ledbetter some hours before the attack.
“He had been acting bizarrely, but the officers … did not have justification to take him into custody at that point,” he said, but added that police do not believe drugs or alcohol were factors leading to the attack.
Neighbors said Ledbetter lives with his two children. His ex-wife answered the door Wednesday and told ABC7 that he’d been acting strange the past few days.
“I want him to get help,” she said. “I don’t want him to come back.”
— City News Service