A Georgia mother jailed in the hot car death of her 1-year-old son was granted bond on Wednesday and will be on house arrest.
Deja Coleman was released on $5,000 bond with restrictions. She must wear an ankle monitor on house arrest and cannot drive her two other children.
Prosecutors didn’t believe Coleman’s claim that she forgot her son was still in the backseat of her car when she arrived to work at Northside Hospital Gwinnett on the morning of July 29.
A hospital worker saw the unresponsive boy in his car seat hours later. Medics attempted CPR but could not revive him.
The temperature inside the car reached 117-degrees, police said.
Coleman, 29, had been in the Gwinnett County Jail since her arrest on July 29. She is charged with second-degree murder and child cruelty.
A judge allowed Coleman to leave the jail to attend her son’s funeral last month.
Coleman is a domestic violence survivor who lives at a transitional housing community in Gwinnett County, according to a bond motion filed in August. She worked as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) at Northside Hospital Gwinnett, and was raising a 6-year-old child with nonverbal autism and a 4-year-old child alone.
Coleman’s attorney, Tom Ford, said she was operating on no sleep and was on a phone call her estranged husband required her to make when dropping off the 2 older children every morning.
Ford is calling for federal legislation to include back seat sensors in all new cars to prevent children from being left in hot cars.
“We do not punish folks in this country for being human,” Ford said in a statement. “The answer is engineering. Spending a couple of hundred dollars on a sensor when a car is built will ensure no more babies suffer an unimaginably horrific death.”