A Sonora man has accepted a plea agreement in the 2019 death of Waterford toddler Koltyn Sparks.
Joseph Luke Maloney, 30, was sentenced Tuesday, Sept. 10, to six years in state prison after the second-degree murder charge was reduced to voluntary manslaughter. He will be released in about a year because of time already served in the Tuolumne County Jail and credits for good behavior.
Maloney was the boyfriend of Koltyn’s mother, Nicole Sparks, and was babysitting him at Maloney’s Shepherd Street home the night before the boy’s death.
An emergency room physician testified in 2021 that Koltyn had bruises all over his body, a lacerated liver and bleeding on his brain. A motive and possible weapons were not disclosed during that preliminary hearing, which ended with Maloney ordered to trial. Various delays kept the trial from happening.
The boy’s survivors reacted to Maloney’s plea deal on a Facebook page called Justice for Koltyn: “We are absolutely not happy. This is not what we wanted. This is not what he deserves . There is truly no justice. We don’t get our boy back, and the toll that has been inflicted upon us has been heartbreaking.”