A twenty-year-old Northwest Georgia man has been charged with second-degree murder after a four-year-old found a gun that was left unattended.  The Paulding County Sheriff’s Office released a statement saying EMTs were called to Hiram, Georgia, last Friday about a child who had fallen, but when they arrived, they discovered the child had been shot in the head.

According to a press release from the Paulding County Sheriff’s Office released this week, the child was beyond help and was pronounced deceased by the Paulding County Coroner’s Office early that morning. Detectives then began speaking with the adults who were in the home. Paulding County deputies on the scene discovered that an adult sibling to the four-year-old had left his gun unattended and that the child must have retrieved it and accidentally shot herself.

Joseph Edwin Hinson is accused of leaving the gun unattended and has been charged with second-degree cruelty to children and murder in the second-degree.

Hinson is currently being held in the Paulding County Jail without bond.