One day after Saylor Hayes was found dead, her parents were arrested in connection to the nonverbal and autistic 5-year-old’s death.
John Herb Hayes III and Geordyn Nichole Hayes were taken into custody on Tuesday, September 1, in Tennessee and each charged with unlawfully placing a child at risk/wilfully abandoning a child, the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office announced in a statement that same day.
As Us previously reported, Saylor was last seen on Sunday, August 30, and eventually found dead in a waterway close to the family’s Pawleys Island, South Carolina, rental home around 9:45 a.m. the following day. Authorities said she was found following an “intensive search” that involved “hundreds of people and multiple agencies.”
John, 70, and Geordyn, 31, were accused of putting 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, 5-year-old child with a known affinity to water and a history of elopement,” according to the arrest affidavit.
Saylor was supposed to wear a Project Lifesaver transmitter because she tended to wander off, though she was not wearing the device when she left the family’s vacation property.
The girl began wearing the monitoring device in 2024, but the device was removed before the family left their home in Virginia to go on the trip. It’s not currently clear why Saylor stopped wearing the tracker.
Authorities have also accused John and Geordyn of complicating the search effort to find Saylor.
“[They] encouraged search efforts to be directed toward the use of tracking technology, despite knowing that the child was not wearing the monitoring device,” police said in the statement. “[They] further directed search efforts away from the nearby body of water.”
John and Geordyn are expected to return to Georgetown County once the extradition proceedings are complete.
After Georgetown County Sheriff Carter Weaver confirmed the parents’ arrests, he addressed their alleged connection to Saylor’s death.
“Parents and caregivers have a fundamental responsibility to protect children who cannot protect themselves,” he said. “When the evidence establishes probable cause to believe that a child has been unlawfully placed in circumstances that endanger that child’s safety, law enforcement has a responsibility to act.”
Weaver added that Saylor was “a vulnerable 5-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.”
Saylor’s cause of death has not yet been confirmed, and an autopsy is scheduled to take place on Friday, September 4.
Just hours before the arrests, Geordyn took to Facebook to pay tribute to her late daughter. Alongside an undated photo of Saylor, Geordyn wrote, “Mommy’s little angel.”
It’s not currently clear whether John or Geordyn had entered pleas or retained legal counsel following their arrests. The investigation into the case remains ongoing.
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