A 10-year-old Fort Oglethorpe girl still is in critical condition a week after she was shot in the eye with a BB gun and the projectile lodged in her brain.
A flood of sympathetic notes and prayers are posted for Megan Neal, a fourth grader at Chickamauga Elementary School, on a Facebook page called "Prayers for Megan."
"Wake up Megan ... I will be there to see you tomorrow. I want to see those pretty eyes and a wonderful smile," one well-wisher posted.
While Megan's family did not return calls seeking comment, family members and friends posted messages on the Facebook page - which has more than 1,000 fans - saying she is showing positive signs and they are hopeful.
Each day Megan's cousin posts a Facebook update for the girl who was shot in the left eye while visiting a relative after school on Aug. 26. The latest post says she is improving but still not awake.
Megan was doing homework with her 9-year-old cousin when the children found the BB gun in a closet and the cousin fired it, Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said.
"It looks like it was a tragic accident," he said.
The sheriff's office still is investigating the shooting, but Wilson said Thursday he doesn't plan to charge anyone in connection with keeping a loaded BB gun in the house.
"It appears the gun was stowed away in a closet," he said.
Megan has been in the intensive care unit of T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital in Chattanooga since the accident, hospital officials said.
Her brain was swelling and bleeding when she arrived, but the swelling decreased when she was placed on a ventilator, a Facebook post says.
Doctors tried to wean her off sedation medicine Tuesday in an effort to wake her, but on Wednesday she still was unconscious, the post reads.