MIAMI — Next week, 4-year-old Jordan Coleman would be in his classroom, finger-painting and learning how to write his name, along with other Pre-K students at Walker Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
But Jordan is dead.
Jordan, a bright little boy known as “the braided one,” and who loved to say “Hallelujah!” to just about everything, was found dead Aug. 1 in a scorching day-care center SUV, parked outside a Tamarac, Fla., apartment complex. The driver of the vehicle transported Jordan and seven other children to the complex, allegedly because the operators of his Sunrise, Fla., day-care center were trying to keep state inspectors from discovering they were over-capacity.
At a news conference announcing the filing of a wrongful death suit Friday, lawyers for Jordan’s mother, Fantasia Goldson, noted that suing the day-care center won’t prevent such tragedies from happening again.
“We don’t have the power to put someone out of business or to regulate the industry or bring about justice to those responsible,” said Stuart Grossman of Coral Gables, Fla. “It’s just unbelievable that you leave a child in a van and forget about him.”
He added that a simple $ 10 device that acts as an alarm could have saved Jordan’s life, but state legislators have failed to pass a bill proposed more than a year ago mandating the device for commercial day-care centers.
The law, introduced by state Sen. Maria Sachs, D-Delray Beach, followed the death of 2-year-old Haile Brockington, whose lifeless body was found strapped into her seat in a Ford Econoline parked for more than five hours at her Delray Beach, Fla., day-care center in August 2010.
Jordan died Wednesday after workers for 3C’s Day Academy in [...]