Police dropped five child abandonment charges Monday against a mother whose two children died in a fire over the weekend, but she still faces charges of murder and child cruelty.
Rockell Coleman, 28, faces two counts of murder and five counts of felony cruelty to children, Capt. Steve Fore told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday.
Her five children were home alone in their Misty Valley Road home when the fire started around 11 p.m. Friday. Three of them survived, though a 10-year-old boy is in critical condition and on life support. Authorities said the other two are in fair condition.
Detectives dropped the child abandonment charges because the law requires the child to be under one year of age for that charge to apply, Fore said. The murder charge is based on the law that makes a death murder if it arises from a felony, in this case child cruelty, he said.
“Second degree cruelty to children only requires that the person causes physical or mental pain with criminal negligence — not that she meant to cause pain,” Fore said. “They were left at a home with no power, conditions were poor in the house and with no adult supervision.”
The power to the house had been cut off, Fore said. The mother said she was at work at her self-employed job of handing out fliers advertising tax services when the fire broke out, Fore said.
Investigators are fact-checking the woman’s whereabouts, but Fore doubted it would result in a change in charges.
All five children were taken to a hospital, where two boys – age 3 and 4 – died. Fire investigators are looking for the cause and are investigating why the children were left alone, Fore said.
A judge denied Coleman bond Saturday night.
She is at least the second DeKalb woman charged this year with murder or manslaughter in cases in which young children died in house fires when left alone. Earlier this year, a jury convicted Angela Johnson, 33, of manslaughter after two of her children died when they were locked in their room and a space heater caused a fire and a third was hospitalized with burns.
A judge sentenced the Stone Mountain woman to 35 years. She and her boyfriend Keith Pinkney had gone to get fast food with his infant daughter at night and found her apartment on fire on returning. Pinkney, 28, still faces trial in the case.
Police charged Johnson and Pinkney with felony counts of child cruelty in December 2010, but a grand jury convened by DeKalb District Attorney Robert James in 2014 also indicted for involuntary manslaughter.
Defense lawyer Ken Hodges said bringing murder or manslaughter charges against neglectful parents in an accidental death can fit the legal standard, but it often can seem like overreach.
“You can shoehorn it to make the facts fit,” said Hodges, who was a prosecutor for more than a decade. “But do you really want to send a parent to prison for the loss of their children?”
Fore said the Johnson and Coleman cases are similar. DA spokesman Erik Burton said he could not comment about the Coleman case because the district attorney’s office had not yet reviewed it.
“I think a lot of times, depending on the case, our office should be an advocate for the person who is most vulnerable in that situation and that is often the children,” Burton told The AJC on Monday. “I don’t think we differentiate between her going to work and her going to Burger King. I think every parent has a responsibility for their child period, and keeping that child in a safe environment is part of that responsibility.”
But it is also the district attorney’s job to determine not only if the facts fit a specific charge but also whether the punishment fits a parent who has already suffered the devastating loss their children, Hodges said.
“People are more protective than we were and society is more protective than it was of children 15 to 20 years ago,” he said. “You may want to bring a charge to send a message to the community, but you certainly want to factor in the loss of the children when you are determining punishment.”
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