Man convicted in child-sex case may have run LV day-care center

Thursday, Dec. 10, 1998 | 11:15 a.m.

A former Las Vegas man will be sentenced in California Friday for sexually molesting a 3-year-old former Las Vegas boy in Apple Valley last year.

Kelly David Smith, 40, accepted a plea bargain in Victorville, Calif., Superior Court last week that will require him to be sentenced to six years in prison and serve at least 85 percent of that sentence, prosecutors said.

California detectives and the mother of the boy say Smith ran a day-care center out of Las Vegas in the early to mid-90s. There is no public record of such a center, but it may have been unlicensed.

The boy's mother, who asked that her name, her son's name and details of the crime not be printed, said that because Smith had been a friend of the family and was experienced in child care, she felt safe hiring him as a babysitter.

"My son seemed troubled after that, and two to three weeks later, brought up casually what was done to him," the mother said of the 1997 incident. "When I confronted him further about it, he got scared. Then, when I told him he could tell mommie anything, he told me what had happened."

Insisting that Smith once operated a child-care business in Southern Nevada, the mother said she wants to alert Las Vegans whose children who may have been left in his care.

"I think it is important for them to know so they can determine if anything happened to their children," the woman said.

Nevada law allows for any person who is molested as a child to report it and have it prosecuted before their 21st birthday. Victims who suffer from "repressed memory" of such molestations are allowed to report incidents by age 28 for potential prosecution.

Police believe Smith returned to Las Vegas for a short time after the incident, then moved to Ohio, where he was arrested on a warrant out of California.

After he serves his sentence, Smith must register with police as a sex offender in the community where he chooses to live.