A pair of women have been charged with the murder of a college student in Talledega National Forrest in Alabama in what should sound pretty straightforward, but it’s Alabama (a.k.a., West Florida) so there’s a lot more to the story than it seems.

As the Guardian reports, Adam Simjee and his girlfriend, Mikayla Paulus, came across a stranded driver while traveling through the forest.  They stopped to help her, but she was actually an armed robber named Yasmine Hider, who marched the couple into the woods, apparently to shoot them.  Armed himself, Simjee pulled his weapon and shot Hider a number of times, but Hider fired a fatal shot.

As the gunfight occurred, Paulus was able to get away, but stopped when she heard Hider call out to another woman, who responded.  Paulus was able to find her cell phone and call 9-1-1 for help.  Unfortunately, Simjee was declared dead at the scene.  Hider survived.

During their investigation, sheriff’s deputies found an encampment Hider reportedly shared with a woman named Krystal Pinkins.  When they went to search the site, Pinkins was there and as the deputies prepared to start their investigation, Pinkins’s five-year-old son emerged from the woods with a loaded shotgun aimed at the officers.

The armed child circled the deputies until he reached his mother, and then he put the gun on the ground as a deputy instructed him to do.  He, too, was taken into custody.  Hider was charged with murder, kidnapping and robbery; Pinkins faces the same charges as well as one of child endangerment.  There’s no word on any charges for the shotgun-wielding toddler.