Father who pleaded guilty but mentally ill in murder of 10-year-old gets 55-year sentence
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — An Indianapolis man who pleaded guilty but mentally ill to killing his 10-year-old son in 2020 was sentenced Monday to 55 years in prison, the Marion County prosecutor says.
Court documents indicate that the boy, Nakota Kelly, had warned his mother of his father’s murder threats, and that the boy was fearful to visit his father after being told he would be spending a weekend with him in July 2020.
Anthony Dibiah, 40, was sentenced to the maximum number of years suggested in the plea deal during a hearing in Marion Superior Court 28.
Officers with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department got a search warrant and on July 19, 2020, entered an apartment in the 6000 block of West Lake South Drive. That’s near I-465 on the city’s west side between Rockville Road and 10th Street.
Officers found brain matter on the bathroom floor. Blood was splattered on the bathroom walls, floor and ceiling.
Dibiah was arrested around 4 p.m. July 19 after being located in Missouri.
Kelly’s body has never been found. His mother, Hayley Kelly, in April 2022, sued Dibiah and the Indiana Department of Child Services, in Marion Superior Court 11. In her lawsuit, Hayley Kelly says she told a Child Services worker on July 14, 2020, that Nakota was afraid of spending time with his father.
“Oh, I’m dead. Don’t expect me to come home,” Hayley Kelly claims Nakota told her. “My dad is going to kill me.”
Marion Superior Court 11 shows no movement on Hayley Kelly’s lawsuit since May, according to online court records.
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