Bail set at $500,000 for sex offender suspected in Seattle park attack

SEATTLE -- A King County judge set bail at $500,000 Monday for 25-year-old Coty Kelly, a man accused of sexually assaulting a female jogger in Seattle’s Myrtle Edwards Park on Sunday.

Police said the jogger told them she saw Kelly urinating, then praying and talking to himself before he allegedly grabbed another woman and called her a racist.

Police said the jogger told them she tried to turn and run away, but Kelly tackled her  to the ground and sexually assaulted her.

According to police, Kelly told officers he was trying to “remove the racism from inside her.”

“My wife was jogging down here around 9 (o'clock)  in the morning Sunday and we found out this morning that someone was caught here assaulting women.  My wife is strong and knows how to protect herself but you can’t always protect yourself,” said Carl, who was at the park Monday with his daughter.

Kelly is a Level II sex offender who was convicted of choking and sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl at an Olympia bus shelter in October 2011.  He went to prison, was released last December, and registered at a halfway house in Tacoma.

This past summer, police say, Kelly cut off his GPS bracelet and failed to check in with his probation officer and hasn’t been seen until his arrest Sunday.

“It sounds like the man is mentally deranged.  When you have someone like that running loose, they could easily scare my dog, and then I’m left by myself with that scary person, and I don’t like that,” said dog walker Gina Championsmith.

Kelly waived his first court appearance, but is expected to be back in court on Thursday.