By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

COLUMBIANA – A 59-year-old Mississippi woman is being held in the Shelby County Jail on bonds totaling $15,000 after she was indicted on a felony charge of aggravated child abuse.

Patricia McCorvey Bradley, who lists an address on Tulane Drive in Gautier, Miss., was transferred from the Jackson County, Miss., Jail into the custody of the Shelby County Jail on June 26 after she was apprehended by the Gautier Police Department on June 21.

Bradley was extradited to Shelby County after a Shelby County grand jury returned a one-count indictment against her and issued a warrant for her arrest in January.

According to Bradley’s indictment, she allegedly abused a child in her custody in Shelby County between June 15, 2015, and July 11, 2015.

The indictment claimed Bradley scratched the child “on her face and back, and did such act on more than one occasion.”

A child abuse charge is upgraded to aggravated child abuse when a person allegedly “tortures, willfully abuses, cruelly beats or otherwise willfully maltreats any child under the age of 18” on multiple occasions, according to Alabama law.

Aggravated child abuse is a Class B felony, and is punishable by up to 20 years in prison upon conviction.

As of June 27, Bradley did not yet have a hearing date listed in Shelby County District Court documents.