CLEVELAND — The issue of mental health may be front and center in the high-profile case of a woman accused of killing a toddler.
New Cleveland police records reveal in late February, officers took Bionca Ellis to Metro Hospital from a shelter after she said she wanted to kill someone and eat their flesh.
Records show Ellis became agitated and began fighting nurses, doctors and police officers in a psych room.
Shelter staff called police and told them Ellis confessed to murdering someone in Bakersfield, California and wanted to surrender.
Bakersfield police told Cleveland police they only knew Ellis from an assault case. Records from Bakersfield showed Ellis was arrested a month earlier at a hospital when she refused to leave after being discharged.
Suspect accused of killing toddler had run-in with police in California.
In Cleveland police records, Bakersfield police went on to say Ellis isn’t named in any homicide cases there.
News 5 Investigators spoke with Michael Benza, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, about the Ellis case.
He says he would not be surprised as the case unfolds if there was a mental illness diagnosis.
“The things that she has been saying to other departments false confessions about other crimes implicating herself in other types of activities is a common paranoid and delusional component of some of those mental health problems,” Benza said.
During a pre-trial hearing on Monday, Ellis rocked in her chair and often leaned her head to the side.
Ellis is charged in a 10-count indictment, including aggravated murder.
She’s accused of stealing knives from a thrift store and stabbing to death 3-year-old Julian Wood in a North Olmsted Giant Eagle parking lot. Prosecutors are waiting for Wood's autopsy report, which is expected in the next three to four weeks.
The judge set her trial for early December. Benza says if this stays a capital case, that date will be unlikely.
“And there have been very clear indications of her conduct in just the court proceedings that she’s already had that competency is going to be a question,” said Benza.
Julian Wood's father speaks during previous arraignment.
Benza says three aspects of mental illness will take up significant time.
That competency will be first and foremost for the case to move forward.
He says two other considerations will be whether there’s a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity, which Benza says goes back to the time of the crime.
“What was her mental status then?” Benza said.
He says the third consideration will be the state ban on executing people with serious mental illness.
"There will have to be an investigation and probably litigation on whether or not she qualifies for that ban,” Benza said.
Ellis is being held on a five-million-dollar bond.
