Love blooms for couple after boy shoots girl

Northwest Georgia couple Audrey Mayo, 24, and Matthew Tyler Webb, 23, didn’t feel the pangs of love until Mayo felt the force of a bullet shot from Webb’s hunting rifle tear through her leg.

It was an accident which brought them together. "It's like a modern version of how a caveman used to bash a woman over the head with a club," Mayo's sister, Rachel Greer, 27, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "These days, they just shoot her in the leg."

On Nov. 21, Webb and Mayo, not yet officially a couple, spent time at Webb’s mother’s house when Webb decided to go after some nearby deer, the Times Free Press reported. Webb grabbed his rifle and began his hunt.

A little later, Mayo thought she heard Webb calling her and walked up on him in a thicket. He shot when he heard the rustle of her footsteps, his bullet piercing her thigh, slicing through a vein, and exiting her kneecap, Mayo told the newspaper.

Mayo woke up days later in a Chattanooga hospital with Webb by her side. She now considers him her boyfriend, she told the paper. Webb has moved in to her house to help in her recovery.

The law may not be so quick to forgive. Webb admitted to police he was under the influence of drugs when he shot Mayo, and he is under criminal investigation.

Webb was charged with discharging a firearm within 150 feet of a roadway and may still face a slew of other offenses.

Lafayette, Ga., Police Captain Stacey Meeks said his department is jointly investigating the incident with the Department of Natural Resources. He expects the DNR will bring an indictment once a toxicology report is returned.

"We had blood samples recovered after he admitted to being under the influence of a couple different drugs, mainly methamphetamine," Capt. Meeks told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "As soon as they come back, they will try to indict him."