A sleep-deprived mother accused of leaving her baby in a sweltering car for nearly nine hours, resulting in his death, has been granted permission to take her two surviving children trick-or-treating this Halloween.
Deja Coleman, 29, received approval Thursday to celebrate with her children while remaining under house arrest in connection with the death of her one-year-old son, Daniel.
A Gwinnett County judge ruled that Coleman may visit all four buildings at Rainbow Village, the Georgia housing community where she is living under GPS monitoring, WSB-TV reported.
The ruling came three months after Daniel was discovered dead inside Coleman’s parked car outside the hospital where she worked.
Coleman has been charged with second-degree murder and second-degree cruelty to children. Prosecutors allege that she forgot Daniel was in the back seat while driving to work on July 29.
Her attorney, Tom Ford, maintains that the tragedy stemmed from extreme sleep deprivation, not criminal intent. He argues that the exhausted mother’s brain was no longer functioning normally.
Coleman was working nine-hour hospital shifts to support her three children: a six-year-old with autism, a four-year-old and baby Daniel.
On the morning of July 29, Coleman dropped her two older children at daycare before driving to Northside Gwinnett Hospital in Lawrenceville, where she started work at about 6:55 a.m.
Ford said Coleman and her children had been staying at a protected domestic violence shelter, arguing that she should be viewed as an abuse victim rather than a criminal
Coleman’s attorney said she had barely slept for most of the week because Daniel was teething
She later told investigators that she believed she had dropped off all three children and did not realize Daniel was still strapped into his car seat.
At about 3:50 p.m., a hospital employee walking toward a vehicle spotted the unresponsive baby in the back seat and immediately called 911.
Off-duty police officers at the hospital broke a window and removed Daniel from the car, but he had already died.
Police said Coleman typically followed a strict morning routine to take her children to daycare before beginning work.
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Detectives believed she had been overwhelmed rather than simply distracted. Officers who saw her reaction after she learned of Daniel’s death described her as devastated.
Ford has called on prosecutors to dismiss the charges, saying his client experienced what he described as a catastrophic neurological failure caused by exhaustion.
‘She was in catastrophic failure,’ he said. ‘Her mind was failing her.’
He cited a phenomenon known as forgotten baby syndrome, which he said can occur when severe fatigue causes the brain to function on autopilot.
Coleman’s attorney, Tom Ford, urged prosecutors to dismiss the case, arguing that ‘medical-grade sleep deprivation’ caused the tragedy
‘Forgotten baby syndrome is a phenomenon,’ Ford said.
‘It does happen… it’s not because we’ve got callous mothers. It’s because we’ve got tired mothers — medical-grade, exhaustively tired mothers.’
Ford also described the impact of profound exhaustion on the brain, saying Coleman suffered what he called a ‘brain glitch.’
‘None of us understand what autopilot, the basal ganglia, that’s what takes over. It’s the autopilot portion of your brain,’ he said.
Ford revealed that Coleman and her children had also been living in a protected domestic violence shelter. He argued that she should be regarded as a grieving mother and abuse victim rather than a criminal defendant.
‘We’ve labeled a grieving mother a murderer,’ Ford said. ‘I would submit there’s no charges at all, because being tired is not a crime.’
He argued that any severely exhausted parent could suffer the same devastating lapse in memory.
‘There’s not any other reason other than being tired,’ her attorney said. ‘We don’t lock people up because they’re tired. We look at the end result and assume I could not do the same, but we could all do exactly the same.’
A judge previously determined that Coleman was eligible for bond and did not pose a threat to her surviving children.
