A Forsyth County man is facing charges in connection with the suspicious death of a 2-year-old boy Friday morning at a home northeast of Cumming.

Christopher Brian Gilreath, 39, will be charged with aggravated battery, cruelty to children and felony murder in the death of Joshua Pinckney, said Forsyth County Sheriff’s Capt. Paul Taylor.

Taylor said that preliminary autopsy results from the GBI Crime Lab indicated that the child suffered multiple blows to the head.

Authorities were called about 7 a.m. Friday to 3525 Catalina Drive, near Lake Lanier, where they discovered the child’s body in his bed.

Gilreath and the boy’s mother, Miriam Pinckney, were home at the time, authorities said. The couple had lived there since December, when they moved from South Carolina.

Gilreath, who authorities say is Pinckney’s boyfriend, was subsequently arrested on charges unrelated to the child’s death.

He was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and failure to register as a sex offender in Georgia. He is a registered sex offender in Pennsylvania.

A second child, Pinckney’s 2-year-old daughter, was taken into protective custody Friday and placed with county authorities. Both children were adopted.

The case is still under investigation, Taylor said.