News 12 at 6 o'clock / Monday, Jan. 23, 2012

BURKE CTY., Ga. -- Right now, a 10-year-old boy sits behind bars, the youngest inmate at the Augusta YDC.

His mother blames him, the juvenile custody system, and most of all, herself.

Christmas presents still sit unopened at Kim McCollum's home. They were for her son, a young boy she says was always happy growing up.

"He always loved mama. One of our main things was laying in bed watching movies together," she said. "But he also loved hunting and fishing and playing, just like normal boys do."

McCollum says like most moms, she didn't want her kids to have guns.

"Even if someone bought him a play gun or a Nerf gun, I would throw them away. And if I did let him have it, I always demanded he never point it at a person. Never, ever."

But that all changed on Dec. 30.

Investigators say he got his hands on a gun, a real one, and pointed it at his father's girlfriend, Jennifer Albright.

"At the time, he was not in his normal state of mind. He said everything that he knew in life went blank," McCollum said.

She's visited and talked with her son every week since the shooting happened.

McCollum says her son didn't always get along with Albright, but that he did not mean to kill her.

"No not at all. That's not what he wanted at all."

She says there were signs he was unhappy, signs that he was angry.

McCollum says all he wanted was to come live with her, his real mom.

"Your mom's supposed to fix things for you, make things better and all right," McCollum said through tears. "He always cried and didn't want to go home. He wanted to stay with me."

But McCollum had lost custody of her little boy after being caught with drugs. She says that's why he lived with his father and Albright.

"That was my big mistake that put my son where he's at. That's where I failed my son. Because if I would not have done that, he wouldn't have been at his dad's and Jennifer would still be alive," said McCollum through tears.

She also blames every agency she contacted about getting help for her son. She says for months she tried to report her son's problems, but nobody would take action. She claims she contacted various DFCS offices, domestic violence shelters, victim support groups and her personal custody case worker.

"It's a broken system," she said. "How could no one help us?"

When asked if she ever imagined something like this would happen, McCollum paused.

"It was back there subconsciously that it could happen," she replied. "But especially with the state of mind he was in, these guns should have never been laying around the house. Or the bullets to go in them."

McCollum feels tortured by her son's pictures and trophies around her home, all reminders that her once-happy child is now an accused killer.

The 10-year-old is set to go before a juvenile court judge Tuesday for his second hearing. Judge Willie Saunders said at the boy's detention hearing that there could be an arraignment Tuesday, too, depending on where the case stands with the district attorney and the GBI.

Georgia law outlines that anyone under the age of 13 can not be prosecuted as an adult in superior court. That's why this case is proceeding in the juvenile court system in Burke County. If convicted, the maximum time any juvenile can be incarcerated is until he or she turns 21 years old.

News 12 will continue to keep you updated on the details of the petition, including exactly which charges the boy is facing, after Tuesday's hearing.