GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — The attorney for a mother charged with murder in her 1-year-old son’s hot car death is asking prosecutors to drop the case and asking Congress to require technology he says would have kept the boy alive.
Deja Coleman, 29, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of her son Daniel, who died July 29 in the parking lot of Northside Gwinnett Hospital in Lawrenceville.
She remains in the Gwinnett County Jail.
Tom Ford, her attorney, said Coleman had gone most of a week without real sleep because the baby was teething. He said she works nine-hour shifts as a nursing assistant and has no one to lean on at home.
“She’s living in a protected shelter with an autistic 6-year-old and a 4-year-old,” Ford said. “She was in catastrophic failure. Her mind was failing her.”
The Lawrenceville Police Department said an employee walking to her own car that afternoon found a child slumped in a car seat nearby and called 911.
Officers forced their way in and tried to revive the boy, who was already dead, the department said in a news release.
Detectives said Coleman told them she handed her two older children to daycare staff that morning, never took Daniel out of the back seat and parked at the hospital shortly after 6:50 a.m.
“There’s not any other reason other than being tired. We don’t lock people up because they’re tired,” Ford said. “We look at the end result and assume I could not do the same, but we could all do exactly the same.”
Ford said he has taken a proposed federal bill to the offices of Sen. Jon Ossoff and Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee. He wants radar sensors in new cars that would detect a child in the back seat, sound the horn and lower the windows.
Congress ordered a rear-seat reminder in the 2021 infrastructure law but did not require cars to detect a child.
Most automakers already add a reminder on their own under a voluntary industry pledge, though those systems generally tell every driver to check the back seat rather than sensing whether a child is there.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration missed its November 2023 deadline to write the rule, so no automaker is required to install anything.
“The technology exists. We just need lawmakers with a spine that care more about infants,” Ford said.
About 38 children die in hot cars in an average year in the United States, according to the safety group Kids and Car Safety.
Meanwhile, Ford is asking the district attorney’s office to dismiss the charges if it finds no aggravating factors.
“We don’t lock people up for making a good faith mistake,” Ford said.
Coleman is set to appear in front of a judge for a preliminary hearing on August 11.
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