A fire chief was fatally shot after he and a driver who had hit a deer on a rural road in Alabama came under fire as they approached a house to ask for help, authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies responded around 5 p.m. Sunday to a report of a traffic accident involving a deer near the Georgia border, the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

They found three men with gunshot wounds. James Bartholomew Cauthen, 54, a battalion chief with Coweta County Fire Rescue in Newnan, Georgia, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver, whose name was not released, and a man identified as William Randall Franklin were flown by helicopter to a hospital for treatment of gunshot wounds, the sheriff’s office said.

Mike Segrest, the district attorney for Alabama’s 5th Judicial Circuit, said in an email Tuesday that Franklin had been charged with murder.

Authorities said that Cauthen had stopped to assist the driver and that the two men sought help nearby in the small community of Stroud, Alabama.

— The New York Times