Dad facing charges after good Samaritan saves baby from hot car

CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — A baby left in a car outside the Clayton County Courthouse is with her grandmother this afternoon.

Channel 2’s Tom Jones was there as court officers cared for the baby and police arrested her father.

“I’ve been in my car for the last five minutes and I’m perspiring and my body is overheated, so you can imagine how hot it was for the 3-month-old child who was left in this car,” said Phoebe Fletcher, a good Samaritan who removed Deja from the car.

She said it happened after the girl's father thought court staff told him babies aren't allowed in the courthouse.

“Soon as I got her she was smiling,” Fletcher said.

But her life could have ended in her father's Cadillac outside the Clayton County Courthouse on a hot day.

Jones watched as her father 37-year-old Courtney Kidd was arrested, accused of leaving the little girl in the car while he went to court.

“The doors were locked, so I kind of got one of the windows down and I just took her; took her the diaper bag,” Fletcher said.

Courthouse sources told Jones the father tried to take the baby through security, but was told to take the baby out of her car seat and send the car seat through the scanner.

That’s when Kidd turned around and left. Fletcher said she saw Kidd as he was leaving.

“He said, ‘I didn't know we couldn't bring babies in,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher said she tried to tell him that wasn’t true.

She said she watched as Kidd took the baby to the car, cracked the windows, locked the doors and went to court. Soon after, she unlocked the door and took the baby inside.

When deputies got Kidd out of court, he tried to go to his daughter, but deputies wouldn't let him.

Fletcher said she did what she hopes anyone would do.

“I have a daughter and I would never leave my baby in the car and I wouldn't leave anybody else's either,” she said.

Kidd is facing child cruelty charges after Monday’s incident. He has a long rap sheet and he’s on probation.

WSBTV