A woman previously charged with running an in-home daycare without proper registration has pleaded not guilty to a separate felony charge.
47-year-old Trina Mazza pleaded not guilty Thursday to Child Endangerment – Death, a Class B Felony, and Operating a Child Care Center Without a License, a serious misdemeanor.
In February, Johnston public safety personnel were called to an in-home daycare located at 6610 Brook Ridge Court in Johnston for an unresponsive 18-month-old boy. Immediate medical care was offered at the scene and the individual was transported to a local hospital for advanced medical intervention, but later died.
“With a child that young, for them to be unresponsive is typically out of the norm,” said Lt. Tyler Tompkins with the Johnston Police Department.
Mazza, the resident and operator of the in-home day care, is an unregistered childcare provider, according to the Johnston Police Department. In March 2011 and September of 2017, Mazza received notices from the Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS), which advised that DHS had received complaints of the alleged defendant operating a child development home with more than five children at any one time.
Both DHS notices advised Mazza that an unregistered in-home provider shall not provide childcare services to more than five children at one time. Upon further investigation after the child’s death, Mazza was found to be operating an in-home daycare in excess of the five children allowed.
Court documents say Mazza “willfully deprived the child of the necessary supervision appropriate to the child’s age when the Defendant was reasonably able to make the necessary provisions, and which deprivation substantially harmed the child’s physical, mental and/or emotional health, resulting in death”.
Mazza and her husband, Michael Mazza, are also facing multiple felony charges each of theft, forgery and dependant adult abuse after allegedly stealing over $160,000 from an adult the two served as caretakers for.