Parents charged in connection with disappearance, death of 5-year-old girl

(NEW YORK) — The parents of a 5-year-old girl who was found dead after being reported missing in South Carolina have been arrested in connection with her death, with arrest warrants alleging they misled authorities during the search for their autistic child.

Saylor Hayes of Virginia went missing on Sunday after wandering away from a rental home in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, according to local authorities.

During an extensive search involving hundreds of people and multiple agencies, her body was found the following day in waters near where she was last seen, according to the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office.

Her parents — John Herb Hayes III, 70, and Geordyn Nichole Hayes, 31, of Bristol, Virginia — were arrested on Tuesday. They have been charged with unlawfully placing a child at risk/willfully abandoning a child “for their actions in the disappearance and subsequent death of their child,” the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office said.

The couple were arrested in Carter County, Tennessee, and are awaiting extradition proceedings to be brought back to Georgetown County to face their charges, authorities said.

Arrest warrants for the parents allege that they placed Saylor “at an unreasonable risk of harm affecting her life and safety by failing to provide supervision and safeguards appropriate for a severely nonverbal, autistic five-year-old child with known affinity to water and history of elopement.”

The girl had been equipped with a monitoring device since 2024, though the device was removed prior to the family leaving Virginia, according to the warrants.

“After the child was discovered missing, the defendant encouraged search efforts to be directed toward the use of tracking technology, despite knowing that the child was not wearing the monitoring device,” the warrant for each parent stated.

The parents are also accused of directing search efforts away from a body of water near where they had allegedly left Saylor unsupervised, according to the warrants.

“The death of Saylor Hayes is a heartbreaking tragedy that has deeply affected our community and everyone who worked so hard to find her,” Georgetown County Sheriff Carter Weaver said in a statement. “From the beginning, our responsibility has been to follow the evidence wherever it led. Following an extensive investigation, Saylor’s parents have been arrested and charged under South Carolina law relating to unlawfully placing a child at risk of or causing harm, or willfully abandoning a child.”

“Saylor was a vulnerable five-year-old child who depended upon the adults responsible for her care and protection,” he added. “She deserved to be safe. She deserved to be protected.”

The parents remain in custody in the Carter County Detention Center, online jail records show. It is unclear if they have an attorney at this time.

The sheriff’s office in Washington County, Virginia, where Saylor lived, said the child had been enrolled in its monitoring program, Project Lifesaver, since June 2024. In the program, individuals who are at risk of wandering wear a transmitter that emits an individualized radio frequency, “allowing specially trained personnel to track and locate them if they become missing,” the office said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office said it provided authorities in Georgetown County with Saylor’s assigned frequency after they requested it on Sunday, though search personnel were unable to detect it.

Washington County authorities subsequently tracked her transmitter to a vehicle at her residence in Bristol, the sheriff’s office said. The transmitter can only be removed by physically cutting the band it’s attached to, the office noted.

“Project Lifesaver works, and we believe strongly in this program,” Washington County Sheriff Blake Andis said in a statement. “When our personnel searched for Saylor’s assigned frequency, the equipment did exactly what it was designed to do. It detected her transmitter and led our personnel to its location.”

“What makes this situation especially heartbreaking is that Saylor did not have her transmitter with her when she went missing,” he continued. “Had Saylor been wearing her Project Lifesaver transmitter, we believe the technology could have assisted search teams in locating her much sooner.”