An all-too-familiar tragedy unfolded in Georgia, leading to what advocates say is an unusually aggressive prosecution of a mother who unknowingly left her baby in a hot car where he died.
Daniel Coleman, 17 months old, was remembered at his funeral Aug. 15. He was the 17th child in the United States to die in a hot car in 2026, and at least three more have died since, according to Kids and Car Safety, an organization that tracks the deaths and advocates for children's safety in cars. An average of 40 children die this way every year in the country, according to the organization.
Georgia prosecutors have charged Deja Coleman, his mother, with second-degree murder, infuriating child safety advocates who say that hot car deaths are nearly always
accidental and tragic. They stress that under the wrong circumstances, any parent could make the fatal mistake of leaving their child in a hot car.
Amber Rollins, the executive director of Kids and Car Safety, said Coleman was a "wonderful, loving mother" who, due to stress that compounded a common memory process in the brain, "lost awareness" that her baby was in the car and not at daycare where she believed he was all day.
"Locking people up and charging them criminally for a tragic accident that they couldn't see coming is just inhumane," Rollins said.
The Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office declined to comment.
What happened in the case?
Deja Coleman drove her three sons, ages 6, 4 and 1, to their daycare center the morning of July 29 from the shelter where they had been living. Then, she drove to the hospital where she worked as a certified nursing assistant. Hours later, a bystander called police to report an unresponsive baby inside a locked car.
Temperatures reached near 90 degrees in Lawrenceville, Georgia, in the Atlanta area that day, and 1-year-old baby Daniel did not survive. An hour after he was removed from the car by police officers, who had broken a window to get him out, the temperature inside the vehicle was recorded at 117 degrees, Lawrenceville Police Captain Dena Pauly said.
Coleman, 29, who police said had forgotten the baby in the car and was "devastated" when she learned what happened, was placed under arrest and charged with second-degree murder and second-degree cruelty to children.
Defense attorney Tom Ford said that Coleman was experiencing "medical grade" sleep deprivation. She and her boys were living at a protective shelter after she was allegedly abused by her husband, Ford and Rollins said. Her oldest child is autistic and nonspeaking, and needs significant attention and care, and the baby had been teething and not sleeping well.
Police said Coleman told investigators she had a habit of bringing the older two into the daycare first, then getting the baby out of the car and bringing him inside. Ford said she would sometimes bring all three in, with the baby on her hip, and other times take baby Daniel in separately.
"The older child has some medical needs that require special attention so that's why she always chose to take him in first," Pauly said.
According to Rollins, Coleman even brought Daniel's diaper bag inside. Though she intended to get Daniel out of the car and take him into daycare, at some point she lost awareness he was there and believed she already had brought him inside, Rollins and Ford said. The boys' normal daycare provider wasn't there that day, and the staff weren't as familiar with the kids, Rollins said.
Murder charge 'cruel and unusual,' advocate says
Of cases where a child was unknowingly left in a car, about 41% do not lead to criminal charges against caregivers, Rollins said. About 31% of the total incidents end in convictions, and Rollins said many of those cases involve plea deals so a parent can avoid jail time or a drawn-out legal battle.
In 2026, there have been 12 cases of children who died after being unintentionally left in cars, and felony charges were brought in seven of those cases, Rollins said. More typically, charges in cases where children are unintentionally left may include involuntary homicide or neglect, she said.
Parents who have been charged with murder in hot car deaths before include a decade-old conviction of a father that was later overturned in Georgia. Additionally, an Arizona man pleaded guilty to murder after intentionally leaving his child in the car but died by suicide before he could be sentenced and a Texas woman was convicted after intentionally leaving her child in a car.
Though police said Coleman forgot Daniel in the car, Pauly said the second-degree murder charge in Georgia does not require malicious forethought and in Coleman's case it was "simply neglect." If convicted of the murder charge, Coleman would face between 10 and 30 years in prison.
Rollins called the charge "cruel and unusual."
"Prosecuting these tragedies criminally, it doesn't just work against prevention, it takes a traumatized parent and just absolutely destroys them. And on top of that, the living children in these families lose a parent after they've already lost a sibling, and that's just cruel," Rollins said of cases where children are unintentionally left.
The science behind why parents leave kids in cars
When a child dies in a hot car, the most common reason is that they were unintentionally left there by a parent or other caregiver, according to data by Kids and Car Safety. Less commonly, children gain access to a car on their own and become trapped, or in some cases they are intentionally left.
It often goes something like this: One parent typically brings the child to school, but for some reason the other parent has to do it one day. They plan to do it on the way from home to their work, a drive they take every day. At some point, the brain's autopilot kicks in, and the parent ends up driving all the way to work without making the stop. It's not until the end of their work day that they discover their child was still in the car.
Children in hot car deaths were supposed to have been dropped off at daycare in about 45% of cases where they were unknowingly left in a car, according to Kids and Car Safety data.
David Diamond, a neuroscientist at the University of South Florida, studies what goes on in the brain when a parent forgets their child in a car. There is a competition in the brain between prospective memory, or the memory of things you are supposed to do in the future (such as drop a child off on the way to work) and the much stronger habit-based memory (such as the routine drive from home to work). Daniel said it's the mental process of driving away with a cup of soda on a car's roof.
A cup of soda and a child are of course not the same, Diamond said, but the brain function that causes someone to unintentionally leave their child in a car is the same.
"As they exit the car, they have no awareness that the child is in the car," Diamond said, adding that their brains can even create a "false memory" that they did indeed drop the child off.
Factors such as a change in routine, sleep deprivation or stress can cause prospective memory to fail much more easily, while habit-based memory is not affected by these, he said.
Anyone can forget a child in a car, experts say. How to prevent a tragedy
In his research, Diamond said he has spoken with people from all walks of life whose memory failures led to the tragic loss of their children.
"In an overwhelming majority of child hot car deaths, it was a loving, responsible parent that unknowingly left the child," Kids and Car Safety says on its website.
Diamond said that most people don't believe they could ever forget their child in a car, but denying the reality of the possibility actually makes people more "complacent."
"People just don't believe you can forget a child in a car, and that also leads to them being very judgmental against those who have," Diamond said.
Kids and Car Safety recommends taking some of the following steps to prevent a hot car tragedy:
- Place your child's diaper bag or another object like a stuffed animal in the front passenger seat as a visual reminder that the child is in the car with you.
- Get into the habit of opening the back door every time you park to make sure a child isn't left behind, even if you are alone. To enforce the habit, place an item you will need to start your day like your cellphone, employee badge or purse in the back seat.
- Ask your childcare provider to call you right away if your child doesn't arrive as scheduled.
- Communicate clearly with others who are getting each child in and out of the car.
Advocates are also pushing for lawmakers to mandate that car manufacturers include technology in cars that will alert when someone is left behind. Another law Kids and Car Safety supports is mandating that childcare providers contact parents if children do not show up as scheduled. New Jersey is the only state with such a law, Rollins said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mom charged with murder in baby's hot car death, sparking outrage
