At 1 p.m. Saturday, 17-month-old Daniel Coleman will be memorialized in Atlanta. As of Friday night, it was unclear whether his mother will arrive at the mortuary in handcuffs. After a fraught legal battle, she won permission to attend the service. Deja Coleman will arrive in a police car. She may or may not be handcuffed. The sheriff’s office will decide whether she can wear civilian clothes appropriate for a funeral or if she will be in a green polyester prison jumpsuit. Coleman has been incarcerated since July 29, the day she accidentally killed her son.
This unspeakable tragedy happens alarmingly often to parents from all walks of life — mothers and fathers of every race, rich and poor, absentminded and fanatically organized.
Last month, Coleman, 29, forgot to drop her youngest child, Daniel, off at daycare after she walked her other two children, ages 6 and 4, inside; she soon left Daniel in her car in the employee parking lot of the hospital where she worked as an assistant nurse, and he sweltered to death. Neither Coleman nor the police contest that narrative. By all accounts, what happened to Daniel was an accident occasioned by sleep deprivation and stress. Friends describe Coleman as a cheerful, upbeat person and a devoted mother. Her pastor, Jesse Hardy, said “she would run through a brick wall for those children.”…