Atlanta mother facing murder charge in hot car death of 1-year-old son appears in court; advocates call case "human vulnerability, not bad parenting"

A metro Atlanta mother accused of leaving her 1-year-old son in a hot car while she went to work appeared in court on Tuesday for her preliminary hearing.

Deja Coleman faces a second-degree murder charge and a second-degree cruelty to children charge after Lawrenceville Police said she left her son locked in her car in the employee parking lot of Northside Gwinnett Hospital on July 30.

Officers arriving at the scene broke a window to get the 1-year-old Daniel out and give him medical treatment. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

During an interview, Coleman told investigators that she had taken her other two children to daycare but forgot to go back to the car and retrieve her son, officials said. Coleman had arrived at the parking lot at 6:55 a.m., more than seven hours before officers got to the scene.

Coleman faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison if found guilty of the second-degree charge.

After discussion between the attorneys and the judge over bond requests and other issues, the judge sent the case to the Gwinnett County superior court. There, another judge will decide whether Coleman will receive bond and whether she will be indicted on the charges.

Following the hearing, Coleman's attorney held a press conference outside the Gwinnett County Courthouse. Joined by child safety advocates, attorney Tom Ford called for Georgia lawmakers to allow for her to be charged with involuntary manslaughter instead of the mandatory murder count.

"Incarcerating Deja is not going to bring Daniel back, and it will not prevent the next hot car death. In fact, treating these tragedies as something only a bad parent could do actually undermines prevention, because parents who believe this could never happen to me have no reason to do anything to prevent against it," said Amber Rollins, executive director of Kids and Car Safety. "These tragedies are not necessarily the result of parents recklessly disregarding their children's safety. They can be the result of catastrophic failure of human memory. The common denominator is not bad parenting. It's human vulnerability."

Ford has argued that Coleman had suffered from "medical-grade sleep deprivation" on the day of the tragedy, and has called for new regulations that would make sensors be required in cars to prevent other parents from leaving their children inside a vehicle.