Mother sentenced to 4 years in prison after pleading to manslaughter of her children in fatal crash

Staff report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Christina Shantell Gordan, 30, has been sentenced to four years in state prison, followed by 15 years of probation, after entering a plea of nolo contendere to two counts of aggravated manslaughter of a child; her two young children were not in child safety seats when they died in a crash in July 2025.

Gordan agreed to an open plea, with both the prosecution and defense agreeing that the Court would not be bound by the score sheet minimum (289.5 months), with a cap of five years in prison; according to the plea document, the maximum sentence for the charges is 60 years in prison.

Judge Denise Ferrero sentenced Gordan to two concurrent sentences of four years in state prison, followed by 15 years of probation, with credit for 15 days served.

Original incident

Gainesville Police Department’s investigation found that at about 6:07 a.m. on July 10, Gordan was driving her vehicle westbound on SW Williston Road when a vehicle turning left onto I-75 failed to yield to Gordan’s vehicle, causing the crash. Bystanders who arrived immediately after the crash reportedly found a six-month-old infant on the driver’s side floorboard between Gordan’s legs, and Gordan reportedly told the witnesses there was a second child, a 22-month-old, who was found on the front passenger floorboard. The two children were trauma-alerted to UF Health Shands and later succumbed to their injuries.

No child seats were found in the passenger compartment of Gordan’s vehicle, and one infant car seat (without a base) was reportedly found in the trunk. The front driver and front passenger seatbelts were locked in the retracted position, leading investigators to conclude that none of the occupants were wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash. The investigation found that the infant was probably sitting on Gordan’s lap at the time of the crash, and the toddler was probably in the passenger seat, unrestrained.

The investigation found that Gordan caused the deaths of the children by culpable negligence by not securing them in child safety seats. The investigation concludes, “[Gordan’s] failure and omission to secure the [victims] in car seats in the rear of the vehicle, as dictated by state law, led to catastrophic injuries, resulting in death from a car crash.”