PAULDING COUNTY, Ga. — Investigators say they don’t believe anyone intended to shoot and kill an 8-year-old girl in Paulding County over the weekend, but they’re not ruling anything out of their investigation.
Deputies say Marsha Lynch, 45, was doing her daughter’s hair in a bedroom of their home on Fairview Drive in Dallas around 5 p.m. on Saturday.
She allegedly told detectives a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun fell to the floor, then fired.
Deputies say one round struck Lynch in the leg and her daughter’s head.
Sharia Lynch died within minutes.
Parents at Sara M. Ragsdale Elementary in Rockmart say it’s tragic that the third-grade student is gone.
“She was just an all-around sweet little girl, very cute, petite little thing. An average 8-year-old just enjoying life. It’s awful. Awful,” said Amie Graves.
“It just breaks my heart because I have an 8-year-old, as well. I can’t imagine what the family’s feeling right now,” Leslie Hargis told Channel 2’s Rikki Klaus.
Monday afternoon, investigators told Klaus that Marsha Lynch is still in the hospital, recovering from surgery.
Investigators say they’re now trying to answer what led up to the gun firing and why was it out in the first place, with three children in the house.
“This gun could have been altered, there could have been some modifications done to it to make it have a shorter trigger pull,” said Sgt. Ashley Henson of the Paulding County Sheriff’s Office. “At the end of the day, a little girl lost her life, and that’s just one of the most horrible things I can think of.”
Deputies are working with the GBI, awaiting the results of an autopsy and a forensic investigation of the handgun.
No charges have been filed.