WORCESTER, Mass. (Court TV) — Nearly nine years after a young child was severely beaten, a man has been indicted for causing the boy’s death.
Jayden Carlson (Sansoucy Funeral Home & Cremation Services)
Steven Stuart, 35, was indicted on a charge of murder in the death of 7-year-old Jayden Carlson, who died in December 2017. In a news release announcing the indictment, the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office said that Stuart was previously convicted on charges of assault and battery on a child causing serious bodily injury for the 2012 incident that eventually led to Jayden’s death.
Prosecutors say that Stuart, who was dating Jayden’s biological mother, threw the then-2-year-old to the ground in August 2012 because the toddler wouldn’t stop crying, the Telegram & Gazette reported.
As a result of the 2012 incident, Jayden suffered “life-altering injuries” and ongoing medical complications, prosecutors said. “Jayden was an average two-year-old, walking, talking little boy,” Deidra Alsten, who adopted the child after the attack, told WFXT. “When [Stuart] got his hands on him, he could no longer walk, talk, speak and eat on his own.”
Jayden died on Dec. 21, 2017, according to an online obituary, which remembered the child as having many friends — “especially the ambulance EMTs and paramedics” — and as having enjoyed “playing” the piano.
Alsten told WFXT after hearing about the indictment, “I have mixed emotions, but mainly I’m ecstatic.”
Prosecutors did not offer any explanation as to why they waited nearly nine years after the child’s death to seek the indictment against Stuart.
Stuart was arraigned on June 18 and ordered held without bail. He is scheduled back in court on July 20.
