Update: Judge issues decision on mother’s role in Waterford toddler’s death in 2019
A judge Friday cleared a Waterford woman of a child abuse charge related to her toddler son’s death in 2019.
Nicole Leanne Sparks, 23, had been accused of negligence for leaving Koltyn Sparks Blackwood with a babysitter who would later be charged with his murder.
The sitter, Joseph Luke Maloney, 26, of Sonora, was ordered to trial Tuesday during the same preliminary hearing in Tuolumne Superior Court. Sparks was Maloney’s girlfriend at the time of her son’s death.
Judge Donald Segerstrom delayed a ruling on Sparks so he could research the prosecution’s argument. Late Friday morning, he said she would not face the charge, which could have brought up to six years in state prison.
Sparks let out a gasp at the defense table, then turned to hug her mother in the first audience row.
Defense attorney David Beyersdorf of Sonora spoke to reporters on Sparks’ behalf afterward. He had argued that she had little inkling of Maloney’s alleged danger, and the case should never have been filed against her.
“It’s a very sad and painful situation,” Beyersdorf said. “... She just wants her privacy. This has been going on for two years.”
Sparks had been charged with child abuse likely to produce great bodily harm and death. Segerstrom said the prosecution failed to show that she acted “with gross negligence, criminal negligence, without a proper regard for human life.”
Child died at 23 months
Koltyn also was the son of Joshua Blackwood of Oakdale. The family created a Facebook page in his memory.
The boy was 23 months old when he died on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 2019, at a Sacramento hospital. The night before, he was in the care of Maloney at his South Shepherd Street home while Sparks worked at Chicken Ranch Casino in Jamestown.
Three physicians testified at the hearing that Koltyn suffered an abdominal injury that tore his liver, leading to his death. The prosecution acknowledged that it did not know just how the injury was inflicted, including a possible object that applied the blunt force.
Other evidence shows that Maloney was the only person in the toddler’s presence at the time of the assault, Deputy District Attorney Cassandra Jenecke said Tuesday. This includes texts between Sparks and Maloney and statements from a roommate who had left for work by 4 p.m.
Jenecke said Sparks should have been wary of Maloney as a babysitter because of past alleged incidents. One was in 2018, when Maloney picked up the child too vigorously. Another was his insistence that his own daughter finish meals she did not want.
Texts about Koltyn’s condition
Koltyn had caught a cold a few days earlier but was feeling better by the day of the assault, testimony at the hearing showed. Sparks and Maloney discussed his condition in some of the texts.
Maloney texted at 10:27 p.m. that Koltyn had gone “completely limp” and that he let him keep sleeping on a futon, Jenecke said. Sparks arrived at about 11:45 p.m., and the couple soon realized that the child was in trouble, the prosecutor said.
They drove him about half a mile to Adventist Health Sonora. The emergency room staff reported bleeding just under the skull and damage to the liver.
Koltyn was taken by helicopter to the University of California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento. He died there at 3:34 p.m. on Jan. 15, 2019.
Maloney was arrested on Jan. 25 of this year by the Sonora Police Department and remains in Tuolumne County Jail on $1 million bail. Sparks turned herself in the next day and was freed on $25,000 bail.
Maloney will return to court on March 19 for further arraignment on charges of second-degree murder and child abuse. A trial date has not been set.
