The prosecution of Tiffany Briana Moore stretched from an October 2023 medical emergency through investigative work, preliminary testimony and a September jury trial.
KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Nearly three years after 15-month-old Jermany Coleman suffered the injuries that led to her death, a Kalamazoo County jury convicted her babysitter, Tiffany Briana Moore, of felony murder, second-degree murder and first-degree child abuse. The Sept. 2 verdict ended the trial phase of a case that began with an emergency call in October 2023 and developed through a lengthy investigation and court process.
The passage of time is central to understanding how the case reached the jury. Jermany’s injuries were discovered in late October 2023, but the prosecution was built over subsequent months and years through medical findings, investigative work and testimony given at pretrial proceedings. Moore, now 34, ultimately went to trial facing three serious counts arising from the same episode. Jurors convicted her on each. Her next scheduled court appearance is Oct. 30 for sentencing, when the felony-murder conviction puts a mandatory life-without-parole penalty under Michigan’s first-degree murder law at the forefront of the case.
The investigation began after Jermany was found in grave condition at a residence in the 3300 block of Michigamme Woods in Kalamazoo. Authorities said the toddler had spent the preceding hours in Moore’s care. The child was rushed for emergency treatment with significant injuries. Local reporting indicates that she remained hospitalized before her death. An autopsy later determined that the manner of death was homicide and that multiple blunt-force injuries caused her death. Those findings changed the case from an emergency involving a critically injured child into a homicide investigation centered on what had happened during the period before she was brought for medical care.
Investigators also had to locate Moore. She was reported missing following the child’s medical emergency, according to reporting from the case, before Kalamazoo public safety officers found her the following day. That early development did not resolve the criminal inquiry. Authorities continued investigating before charges moved through the courts. The time between the initial incident and the eventual verdict reflected the need to assemble medical evidence, establish the child’s circumstances, present the prosecution’s theory in pretrial proceedings and ultimately prove the allegations to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
One of the most important pretrial accounts came from Jermany’s mother, Dae’Janique McClenton-Howard. At a 2024 preliminary hearing, she described returning to her apartment and finding that Moore and the toddler were initially not there. They returned a short time later. Moore handed Jermany to her mother wrapped in a blanket, according to the testimony. McClenton-Howard said that once she could see her daughter clearly, she noticed severe swelling around the child’s eyes and saw that her body was limp. Moore attributed the condition to an allergic reaction.
The medical evidence developed a very different explanation for the child’s condition. Sarah Brown, a child abuse pediatrician at Bronson Children’s Hospital, testified that Jermany had extensive swelling around her eyelids and severe swelling of the brain. Doctors were sufficiently concerned about the brain injury to consider the possibility of brain death. An autopsy ultimately attributed Jermany’s death to multiple blunt-force injuries and classified it as a homicide. Together, the clinical findings and the mother’s description helped establish a timeline in which the child was in Moore’s care before appearing critically injured.
The charges that followed required prosecutors to prove different but connected elements. Michigan defines first-degree child abuse as knowingly or intentionally causing serious physical or serious mental harm to a child. The state’s felony-murder law treats a murder committed while perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate first-degree child abuse as first-degree murder. Prosecutors therefore did not have to present the abuse and the death as separate episodes. Their case linked the alleged intentional serious harm to the homicide itself. Jurors agreed, finding Moore guilty of first-degree child abuse and felony murder along with second-degree murder.
The verdict carried consequences beyond a general finding of criminal responsibility. Under Michigan law, first-degree murder is punishable by life imprisonment without eligibility for parole, subject to special rules for defendants who were juveniles at the time of an offense. Moore was an adult. Second-degree murder separately may be punished by life imprisonment or any term of years, while first-degree child abuse is also punishable by life or a term of years. The trial court will address the formal judgment and sentencing consequences of the multiple guilty verdicts at the Oct. 30 hearing.
Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Capt. Danielle Guilds described the verdicts as the product of years of persistence by investigators and prosecutors. Her statement emphasized that the jury had carefully considered the evidence and credited the Kalamazoo County Prosecutor’s Office with moving the case forward. The timing of that statement underscored how long the matter had remained open: the verdict was returned almost three years after the injuries that ultimately killed Jermany. Guilds also acknowledged that a successful prosecution could not undo the family’s loss.
The September verdict also changed the legal status of the central claims that had been contested through the criminal process. Before trial, the prosecution’s account was an allegation that Moore had intentionally abused Jermany and caused her death. After the jury returned its decision, those allegations became criminal convictions. The remaining questions concern sentencing and any later post-trial proceedings. No basis exists yet to report the precise terms the trial judge will enter beyond the penalties authorized by state law and the mandatory punishment attached to felony murder for an adult defendant.
The long procedural path is especially visible when compared with the short span of time at the center of the evidence. Authorities focused on the hours when Jermany was in Moore’s care, her condition when she was returned to her mother and the medical findings that followed. Investigators then spent far longer reconstructing those events for court. Preliminary testimony in 2024 placed the mother’s observations and pediatrician’s findings on the record. The case eventually reached a jury in 2026, where the prosecution had to convert that accumulated evidence into proof sufficient for three guilty verdicts.
Moore is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 30, the next confirmed milestone in the prosecution. The hearing will come more than three years after the October 2023 emergency that began the case and about eight weeks after the jury’s verdict. Until then, no final sentencing judgment has been entered. The central question of criminal guilt, however, has been answered: jurors concluded that Moore committed first-degree child abuse and was responsible for Jermany Coleman’s death.
Author note: Last updated October 19, 2026.