He Was Still Breathing After the Shot. Then We Found the Second Gun.

The first thing I remember is the breathing. Not the blood, not the screaming, not even the gun lying somewhere near the couch. It was that little boy still fighting for air. It was July 7, 2018, in Augusta, Georgia, and when we arrived at the apartment, the scene in front of us looked less like a crime scene than a family’s worst nightmare happening in real time. A four-year-old boy had been shot in the back of the head. His father was frantic, his mother was overwhelmed, and everyone was talking at once. Someone kept saying the child was still breathing, as if repeating those words could somehow keep him alive. I remember looking at that little body and thinking the same thing everyone else was thinking: How can a four-year-old survive something like this? The 911 call had initially sounded like a terrible accident, but within minutes, I realized we weren't simply there to determine what had happened. We were standing inside the beginning of a much bigger investigation.

The apartment was chaos. People were crying, shouting, trying to help, and at the same time trying not to make the situation worse. We had to keep everyone away from the child and away from anything that might later become evidence. One of the first things we were told was that a gun was somewhere in the area. That immediately changed the way I looked at the room. A moment earlier, my attention had been entirely on the child. Now I had to think about where the weapon was, whether anyone else could reach it, and whether there was another danger we hadn't seen yet. The father kept moving between panic and disbelief. He wanted his son helped. He wanted his wife taken care of. He wanted answers. At one point, he told us he had heard a pop, then saw blood on his wife and his son lying on the floor. He said he picked the boy up, saw the wound, covered his head with a towel, and kept telling him, “Fight, son. Fight. I got you.” That sentence stayed with me because it was the voice of a father who couldn't accept what his eyes were showing him.

Then came the detail that seemed to explain everything. The family told us the handgun normally stayed beneath the couch. The boy had been sleeping on or near that couch. The father explained that his wife had apparently gotten up earlier, and the gun was not where it normally belonged. Investigators determined that the four-year-old had found a handgun hidden beneath the family's couch and accidentally fired it, suffering a gunshot wound to the head. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital while we remained behind to secure the apartment and reconstruct what had happened. On the surface, it looked like the terrible kind of accident people spend the rest of their lives wishing they could undo. But there was something about the scene that wouldn't let me stop there. We found one firearm in the area, and then another. One was identified as a .40-caliber handgun, and the officers at the scene noted that its safety was not engaged. The other firearm had its safety on. Suddenly, the room wasn't just about one tragic moment. It was about every decision that had placed those weapons within reach of a four-year-old child.

The father kept trying to understand the physical evidence. He questioned the amount and direction of blood, the location of the injury, and where the gun had supposedly been when it fired. He told us he knew what a gunshot looked like because he had seen violence before, and he couldn't make the scene make sense. I understood why he was searching for an explanation. When something unbearable happens, the human mind wants a version of events that feels organized. We want to believe there was one clear mistake, one clear reason, one clear person to blame. But crime scenes don't always give you that comfort. Sometimes they give you fragments: a couch, a coffee table, a firearm, a towel, a child's body, and a family trying to reconstruct a few seconds that can never be lived again. The father also told us the weapons belonged legally to his wife, who had a concealed-weapons permit. That detail mattered because ownership wasn't the same thing as safe storage. The question we were left with was not simply, “Who owned the gun?” It was, “How did a four-year-old get close enough to fire it?”

There was another detail I couldn't get out of my mind. Just the day before, the family said the mother had encountered someone around the apartment complex who made her feel threatened. She had shown him another firearm, and he reportedly backed away. The family believed that incident was part of why the gun had been moved from its usual location. In their minds, they were trying to protect themselves. That is what makes cases like this so painful. People don't always make dangerous decisions because they want something terrible to happen. Sometimes they make them because they are afraid something terrible might happen. A gun gets moved because someone feels threatened. It gets placed somewhere that seems convenient for the moment. A child is sleeping nearby. Someone assumes the weapon will remain untouched. And then one ordinary assumption collides with a four-year-old's curiosity. The result can be irreversible.

While the boy was being taken to the hospital, the family was still desperately hoping he would survive. The father asked us repeatedly about his son. He begged us to get his wife to the hospital. He told us he would go wherever we needed him to go. He was terrified of losing his child, and in those first minutes, there was no sense that anyone understood how dramatically the situation was about to change. But investigators were already looking at the apartment differently. We couldn't simply accept the first explanation and walk away. We had to preserve the scene, document where everything was, identify the weapons, and determine how the shooting actually occurred. One of the officers even remarked that they had seen terrible things before, including the death of another child, and that this scene would stay with them too. That is something people don't always understand about police work: sometimes the hardest part isn't arriving at the emergency. It's knowing that once the emergency is over, you still have to stay there and reconstruct it piece by piece.

Days later, the case took a turn that changed the meaning of that first night. Investigators arrested the boy's parents, Justin Winthre Foss Sr. and Shelby Paige Foss, as the investigation moved forward. The Richmond County grand jury later indicted Justin Foss Sr. on felony murder, second-degree murder, second-degree cruelty to children, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Shelby Foss was charged with second-degree murder and second-degree cruelty to children. Shelby later entered a not-guilty plea, while Justin remained jailed without bond because of his prior felony conviction. In 2020, Shelby's bond was reduced from $200,000 to $100,000 under conditions that included restrictions on contacting her husband or minor children while the case continued. Those are legal allegations and court proceedings, not a substitute for a final determination of guilt.

But whenever I think back to that apartment, I don't remember the indictment first. I remember the breathing. I remember everyone asking whether that little boy was still alive. I remember the father holding him and begging him to fight. And I remember looking at a firearm that, in another context, might have been described simply as legally owned, yet in that room had become the center of a child's irreversible injury. That's the part people often miss when they hear about a tragedy like this. The disaster doesn't necessarily begin when the gun fires. Sometimes it begins much earlier, with the small decision that nobody thinks will matter. Where do we put it? Will it really be a problem? He's only four. We'll move it later. Those decisions can feel harmless until suddenly there is no “later” anymore. The boy was still breathing when we arrived, and for a few minutes, that breathing represented hope. But the lesson I carried away was about everything that had to happen before that single shot. A tragedy can happen in one second, but the choices that make that second possible can begin hours, days, or even years before it. And sometimes the most important question isn't simply who pulled the trigger. It's who made it possible for a child to reach it.