Authorities arrested the parents of nonverbal autistic 5-year-old girl Saylor Hayes in Tennessee on Tuesday, a day after she was found dead in South Carolina.
John Hayes III, 70, and Geordyn Hayes, 31, of Bristol, Virginia, were charged with willfully abandoning a child or otherwise unlawfully putting her at risk, according to affidavits uploaded to social media by the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office in South Carolina.
The sheriff’s office said Mr. and Ms. Hayes “placed the child 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 couple will be sent back to South Carolina to face trial once extradition proceedings wrap up, the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office said.
Saylor was first reported missing Sunday from a rental property in Pawleys Island, South Carolina.
At the time she went missing, Saylor was supposed to be equipped with a monitoring device, according to the affidavit. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia said on social media that Saylor had been enrolled in its Project Lifesaver program that provided the band since June 2024.
When Georgetown County deputies couldn’t detect the frequency of Saylor’s monitoring device, they reached out to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. The Virginia deputies then detected the frequency and found the device inside a vehicle on the Hayes family property in Bristol, the sheriffs said on social media.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office said that “the transmitter is attached using a specialized band designed for continuous wear. It cannot simply be unclasped or removed by the client; the band must be physically cut in order to remove the transmitter.”
Georgetown County authorities allege that Mr. and Ms. Hayes encouraged them to look for Saylor via the transmitter despite knowing she wasn’t wearing it, plus accused them of diverting search efforts from the water near where Saylor went missing, per the affidavit.
Personnel with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources ultimately found Saylor’s body in water near where she went missing on Monday morning, the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office said.
Georgetown County Coroner Chase Ridgeway said Saylor’s body showed no signs of trauma and that an autopsy is scheduled for Friday, according to Bristol’s WCYB-TV.
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