A Verbena man was taken by helicopter to UAB Hospital on Monday after an accidental gunshot wound.

The 80-year-old man was home alone shortly after 3 p.m. when a gun he had been cleaning fell onto the floor and discharged, according to Chilton County Sheriff Kevin Davis.

“When we got there, there was a hole in the wall that looked like where a shotgun had gone off, but the hole in the wall didn’t match up with the wound,” Davis said. “We determined that the hole was from an earlier incident where one his guns had gone off accidentally.”

Monday’s incident took place off County Road 534 in Verbena.

The subject suffered wounds to both legs from the blast from a 12-gauge shotgun. The injuries did not appear life threatening, Davis said, though the man was bleeding profusely.

He was taken by ambulance to the Verbena High School baseball field, where a helicopter landed and took him to UAB.