A Georgia mother charged with murdering her one-year-old son, who died after being left in a hot car, has asked for the charge to be temporarily dropped so she can attend his funeral. Deja Coleman, 29, was arrested after her son Daniel was found dead in her locked car in a hospital car park in July, and her defence attorney's request to have the second-degree murder charge lifted was rejected in court, with the case now moving to superior court. The case has drawn attention to the pressures faced by exhausted single parents, with Coleman's lawyer arguing the death was a tragic mistake rather than a crime.

Coleman, a certified nursing assistant and single mother of three, including a six-year-old with nonverbal autism, was said to be running on almost no sleep when she forgot to bring Daniel inside after dropping off her older children at daycare on 29 July. She began her hospital shift around 6.55am, and Daniel was discovered slumped in his car seat roughly nine hours later, at about 3.50pm, by a hospital employee. Police reached the scene within three minutes and broke the car window, but Daniel was already dead. Coleman remains held without bond at Gwinnett County Jail on charges of second-degree murder and second-degree cruelty to children, with the funeral scheduled for this Saturday.