United States Attorney for the District of Nevada Nicholas A. Trutanich speaks during a press conference held to discuss the murder of a 3-year-old on the Ely Shoshone Indian Reservation Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019.
Published Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019 | 12:07 p.m.
Updated Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019 | 8:05 p.m.
Colon Jackson
Federal authorities allege that a man tasked with watching his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter in the Ely Shoshone Indian Reservation in Northern Nevada earlier this year beat the toddler to death, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Las Vegas announced Tuesday.
Colon Jackson, 28, a member of the tribe, was indicted by a grand jury Thursday on one count of first-degree murder, according to court documents. He was arrested the following day.
The White Pine County Sheriff’s Office this week identified the victim as Alyanha Bliss, 3, of Ely. The child’s mother, Maria G. Bliss, who is Jackson's girlfriend, was arrested Jan. 11 on counts of child neglect and obstructing a police officer, officials said. No further details were available.
The child’s mother picked her up from day care on Jan. 9 and took her home for Jackson to care for while the woman was at work, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, referencing the indictment and facts presented at a detention hearing.
Jackson later called the mother at work and told her the girl was unconscious, officials said. The mother returned home and took the child to an emergency room in Ely, officials said.
The toddler was subsequently flown to a hospital in Salt Lake City, where she died, officials said.
A medical examiner determined the girl died from blunt force trauma to the head and also suffered injuries to her spine, genitalia and buttocks, said Nicholas Trutanich, U.S. attorney for Nevada, during a press conference in a federal building in Las Vegas.
Trutanich added that Jackson had a history of child abuse against the toddler.
State records show that the Division of Child and Family Services, which investigates child abuse allegations, had three prior contacts with Alyanha’s immediate family: two in January 2018 and a third in May that year.
In the first two instances, investigators deemed contact as an “information only report.” The third was deemed as a “differential response,” according to a child death disclosure form. Further information on those contacts wasn’t available, but the agency said it was collaborating with the FBI.
Jackson will appear before a federal judge Thursday in Northern Nevada.
The case comes as the federal government has ramped up collaborative efforts with tribes, Trutanich said. This was the third homicide investigation — involving four female victims — recently probed by the FBI, Trutanich’s office said.
In early 2018, agents charged Stoney Prior, a member of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, with the fatal shooting of two women, according to federal court documents. Prior allegedly used a shotgun to kill his victims in a home in the outskirts of the reservation, and supposedly confided to an acquaintance that he’d done it.
A fourth homicide occurred this year, but a complaint was filed under seal, meaning further details were not publicly available, Trutanich’s office said.
“Our Native American communities in Nevada are full of mothers, daughters, sisters and friends, all of whom live meaningful lives,” Trutanich said, a copy of Jackson’s indictment displayed on a background screen. “Too often those lives are terrorized by violent crime or, worse yet, cut short by it.”
He said the federal government was committed to “fully investigate and prosecute” violent crime on tribal land, noting that such crimes have reached a “fever pitch,” with murder being the third leading cause of death for indigenous women.
The work, Trutanich said, has just begun, to “ensure victims of violent crime are not invisible … missing women need to be found and murdered women need their killers brought to justice.”
As he finished his remarks, he began to speak about the case of Alyanha, the little girl whose life was tragically cut short.
