A Florida college student exploring the Alabama wilderness with his girlfriend has died in a shootout with a would-be robber who posed as a stranded motorist, authorities said.

The death led to the discovery of an “off-the-grid” encoampment in the woods, two arrests and law enforcement confronting a 5-year-old boy armed with a shotgun in the camp, the authorities said. authorities.

Adam Simjee, 22, and his girlfriend, Mikayla Paulus — both students at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Fla. — were driving through Talladega National Forest near popular Cheaha State Park in Florida on Sunday. eastern Alabama when a woman, Yasmine Hider, reported drove them down and asked for help with her car, the Clay County Sheriff’s Office said.

Hider then pulled out a gun and ordered them into the woods, sheriff’s officials said. That’s when Simjee pulled out a gun he was carrying and the couple ended up in a shootout, Clay County Sheriff Jim Studdard said.

“Adam pulled out his gun and told her to get down and that’s when she started playing with her gun. It got stuck once but they both shot each other on it and she was shot multiple times and he was only shot once,” Simjee’s girlfriend Mikayla Paulus, 20, told local ABC affiliate WBMA-TV.

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Simjee died despite the efforts of Paulus, who was performing CPR on him when authorities arrived, according to a statement from sheriff’s officials. She was not injured.

Hider was shot multiple times and underwent surgery at a Birmingham hospital. She was awaiting transfer to a prison and will face charges of suspected murder, two counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery, authorities said.

Officials were looking for a second suspect and during the investigation learned there may be a group of people “living off the grid” somewhere in the national forest, the sheriff’s office said in a statement. The Alabama Department of Corrections used tracking dogs and found a group of tents set up in the National Forest, about a mile from the Cheaha State Park boundary.

Officers saw a woman, Krystal Diane Pinkins, as they approached the camp and ordered her to the ground. That’s when a child ran out of the woods holding a loaded shotgun, according to Studdard.

Authorities said they told the boy – 5 – to put the shotgun down, but he continued to approach the woman, who authorities later discovered was his mother, before laying down the gun.

The local human resources department was notified and took custody of the child. Pinkins, 36, was arrested on suspicion of endangering the welfare of a child, murder, two counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery.

Studdard said it didn’t appear anyone else was using the camp at the time. It was located about half a mile from the site of the attempted robbery. It is legal to camp in the Talladega National Forest, forest service officials said, but only for 21 days at a time.

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The camp has been turned over to state forest law enforcement who will dismantle it, the sheriff said.

Court records did not show whether Hider or Pinkins, who had an address in Memphis, Tennessee, had an attorney who could speak on their behalf.

Simjee and Paulus were preparing to start the school year at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, she told AL.com. “We were starting school on Monday, so we wanted to take one last road trip,” she said.

“I lost the love of my life,” Paulus told the news site. “It will be with me forever.”

Contributor: Associated Press

Contact Gadsden Times reporter Donna Thornton at [email protected].