A Virginia couple have been arrested after their 5-year-old daughter, described as autistic and nonverbal, was found dead in South Carolina waters this week.
John Herb Hayes III, 70, and Geordyn Nichole Hayes, 31, of Bristol, were arrested Monday evening in Carter County, Tennessee, and charged with unlawfully placing a child at risk or willfully abandoning a child, the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office announced.
Their daughter, Saylor Hayes, was reported missing Sunday afternoon. Her body was found Monday morning in the waters near Hagley Landing, a boat ramp leading to the Waccamaw River in the small town of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, following an extensive search involving hundreds of people and multiple agencies.
The arrest warrant affidavits for the parents say that on Sunday, they placed Saylor at risk of harm 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 parents were being held at the Carter County Detention Center in Tennessee without bond pending an extradition hearing. It was not immediately clear Wednesday night whether they have attorneys.
Authorities initially said Saylor’s mother reported that her child had wandered off from a rental home in Hagley Estates in Pawleys Island and was last seen wearing her swimsuit.
Deputies said they were trying to track her with a Project Lifesaver transmitter, a wearable device that emits a frequency that law enforcement can track if the wearer goes missing.
Saylor had been wearing a Project Lifesaver monitoring device since 2024, but it had been removed before the family left Virginia, the affidavits said. Then, once she was in South Carolina, Saylor was left unsupervised within 15 meters of a body of water, the filing said.
After she disappeared, the parents encouraged search efforts to be directed toward using the tracker even though they knew Saylor was not wearing the device, and they also directed search efforts away from the nearby body of water, the affidavits said.
Georgetown County Sheriff Carter Weaver called Saylor’s death “a heartbreaking tragedy” that has “deeply affected our community.”
“Saylor was a vulnerable five-year-old child who depended upon the adults responsible for her care and protection,” he said in a statement. “She deserved to be safe. She deserved to be protected.”
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia said in a statement that it was the agency hosting the Project Lifesaver program that Saylor enrolled in back in June 2024. It said the program helps law enforcement find people at risk of wandering because of cognitive conditions or special needs.
After Saylor disappeared Sunday, it said, the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office reached out to request information about her Project Lifesaver transmitter.
When searchers in South Carolina were unable to detect her frequency, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office was asked to check her home. When officers responded to the Hayes residence, they detected the frequency assigned to Saylor’s transmitter, which was inside a vehicle on the property, the sheriff’s office said.
“The transmitter was not with Saylor when she went missing in South Carolina,” the agency added.
The sheriff’s office noted that the transmitter is attached using a specialized band 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.”
“Nothing we do can bring Saylor back,” said Weaver, the Georgetown County sheriff. “What we can do is pursue the truth, seek accountability through our justice system, and continue doing everything within our authority to protect the most vulnerable members of our community.”
