Corina Vanek

The Republic | azcentral.com

A Phoenix man whose 3-month-old baby died after being left in a hot car last summer was sentenced Friday to four years in prison followed by seven years' probation.

Daniel Bryant Gray, 33, was arrested in 2013 after his son was found unresponsive in his car parked outside the bar where Gray worked. Records show that the boy was in the car for nearly three hours before Gray remembered that the child was inside.

While at the bar, authorities said, Gray smoked marijuana with coworkers while Jamison, his son, was in the car. However, Judge Dawn Bergin of Maricopa County Superior Court said she did not believe that the use of the drug had an impact on him forgetting the boy in the car.

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Prosecutor Ariel Serafin said that while the death was unintentional, Gray had a responsibility to know his son's whereabouts.

"As parents, we have an obligation to know where our children are and to keep track of them," Serafin said.

Serafin said that Jamison's death was a "tragic, tragic mistake" and that the lives of Jamison's family havew been "forever altered."

Jamison's mother and maternal grandparents were present at the hearing but declined to speak. They sobbed as the attorneys talked about the day the baby died.

Defense attorney Erika Warner said Gray was traumatized by the incident and detailed the scene after Gray found the boy unresponsive.

"He was screaming for help, holding the child in a cooler hoping to bring him back to life," Warner said.

Warner said Gray was always a loving father to both of his sons and always tears up when he talks about Jamison.

She said that Gray had told her that no matter what sentence he received, it could not fix what had happened or compare to the trauma he goes through.

Gray sobbed as he addressed Bergin and said he couldn't explain what happened that day.

"I love my son, I'll always love him," Gray said. "I don't want this to define me as a father. I'm a good father."

He said that he hopes to be able to spend time with his 8-year-old son after he gets out of prison.

"He needs his father, too," Gray said.

Before delivering the sentence, Bergin said it was "one of the toughest cases" that she had worked on. She said that she understood that he loved his son and that she could not imagine anything worse than being in Jamison's mother's position.