A 10-year-old girl is in critical condition after a BB gun fired, hit her in the left eye and lodged inside her brain, Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said Friday.
The girl and her 9-year-old cousin were doing homework in the dining room of her great-aunt’s house off state Highway 341 in Chickamauga when family members heard a shot, the sheriff said.
“There are some conflicting statements about how the gun discharged,” he said. “(But) we believe it was accidental.”
The BB gun was kept in a closet in the dining room, and the children somehow got hold of the weapon, Wilson said.
When police arrived the girl, whose name was not released but who is from Fort Oglethorpe, was rushed to Erlanger hospital. She was listed in critical condition in the children’s intensive care unit there Friday afternoon, the sheriff said.