Investigators described drugs, cash, guns and snakes in the room where a 2-year-old boy was found in medical distress.
SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY, Va. — The motel room where a 2-year-old boy was found unresponsive became the centerpiece of the criminal case that ended with a 20-year prison sentence for his father, Cinceir Croxton, in Spotsylvania County.
By the time of sentencing in March 2026, prosecutors had a narrative built around the room itself: cocaine residue on a PlayStation, drugs in an unlocked safe, thousands of dollars in cash, unsecured guns and snakes in a Pack ’n Play. CJ Croxton Jr. later died after doctors found cocaine in his system, turning the condition of the room into evidence of a larger pattern of danger and neglect. The court was not deciding whether the child was in a perfect home. It was deciding whether the setting around him helped explain why he died.
Witnesses from the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office told the court that what they found inside the Econo Lodge room was alarming even before the child’s medical history was fully examined. Authorities said they recovered about 70 grams of cocaine and roughly $4,000 in cash. One report from the sentencing said deputies also found three unsecured guns. The reptiles described in court were especially striking because they were being kept in a Pack ’n Play portable crib, a place normally associated with a toddler’s rest and safety. CJ tested positive for salmonella, and reporting on the case said the infection can be carried by snakes. Prosecutors used those details to show the room was not chaotic in a vague sense. It was a place where multiple known risks sat within reach of a very young child.
Only after that evidence came into focus did the case widen into a timeline of what happened to CJ. He died Dec. 7, 2023, after adults in the room realized he was unconscious and called 911. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors discovered cocaine in his system and notified police. Officers then returned to the motel and began documenting what was inside. In the months that followed, Croxton and the boy’s mother, Kahleighya Coleman, were arrested. The prosecution’s theory was that the emergency at the hospital and the search at the motel were not separate stories. One showed the child’s condition. The other showed the environment in which that condition developed.
The child’s medical needs added another layer. CJ had sickle cell disease and needed regular treatment, but reporting on the case said he had gone without that care. He also tested positive for salmonella, and hospital staff tried to treat him, but the parents refused, according to accounts cited in the coverage. Those facts let prosecutors argue that the risk to CJ was not limited to what deputies physically seized in the room. It also included decisions about treatment, supervision and basic care. Unknowns still remain in the public record, including the exact medical sequence that led from exposure and illness to the child’s death. But the known details were enough for prosecutors to press murder and abuse charges and for both parents to enter guilty pleas rather than take the case to trial.
Croxton’s legal path narrowed over time. He originally faced second-degree murder, child abuse, possession of drugs with intent to sell, possession of a firearm while under the influence of drugs and child endangerment. He pleaded guilty in October 2025 to second-degree murder, child abuse and drug charges, while the firearm and child endangerment counts were dropped under the agreement. The plea deal capped his sentence at 20 years, and Judge William Glover imposed that full term. Coleman had already pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and child abuse charges and received a 15-year sentence. With those pleas, the courtroom focus shifted from proving the room’s contents to deciding how much prison time the parents should serve.
At sentencing, the room evidence was joined by moral judgment. Croxton said he loved his son “dearly,” but Glover said the child’s living circumstances “inevitably” killed him. The judge also said, “It was a series of choices you made.” Those comments matched the prosecution’s framing of the case: not a single sudden act, but an accumulation of decisions that placed a child in danger day after day. The physical details of the room mattered because they made that argument concrete. A game console dusted with cocaine, an unlocked safe, cash, guns and reptiles in a crib all gave jurists and the public a set of objects that told the story in plain terms.
Currently, the criminal cases against both parents have now ended in prison terms, with Croxton sentenced to 20 years and Coleman to 15. What remains is the public record of the room where CJ lived in his final days and the court’s conclusion that those conditions were central to how the case was judged.
Author note: Last updated April 15, 2026.