A vacation in South Carolina ended in a nightmare for a family from the Bristol area of Washington County, Virginia, after their 5-year-old daughter, Saylor Hayes, disappeared from a Hagley Estates rental home in Pawleys Island.
The child was severely nonverbal and autistic, with a “history of elopement” and an affinity for wandering off toward water bodies.
Highlights
- Autistic and non-verbal 5-year-old Saylor Hayes disappeared from a South Carolina town after she was left unsupervised near a water body.
- After she was found lifeless in the river, authorities arrested her parents on charges of placing a child at risk.
- The couple has previously been accused of child neglect and faced felony charges.
After being reported missing on Sunday, August 30, her lifeless body was found floating in the Waccamaw River the next day, near the place where she was allegedly left unsupervised.
However, the search efforts were significantly complicated by an alleged lie her parents told the authorities.
The parents, John Herb Hayes III, 70, and Geordyn Nichole Hayes, 31, were arrested on September 2 and face charges for neglecting their child.
“People need to stop having kids if they can’t even watch them,” one user commented.
Saylor Hayes’ parents were arrested after her tragic passing on charges of child neglect
Minutes before her disappearance on Sunday, John and Geordyn left Saylor unattended about 15 meters (about 50 feet) away from a body of water.
Authorities described Saylor as approximately 3 feet, 6 inches tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing a light-blue one-piece bathing suit and a pink-and-white lanyard around her ankle.
As a large-scale search began, involving hundreds of people and multiple agencies, drones, helicopters, K-9 units, and divers, authorities asked everyone to approach her gently if she was spotted because of her communication difficulties.
The state’s Department of Natural Resources found her on Monday at around 9:45 p.m. Her body bore no signs of immediate trauma, the authorities later said.
As of now, officials have not publicly released a cause of demise, but an extensive investigation led to the arrest of Saylor’s parents within two days. John Herb Hayes III and Geordyn Nichole Hayes were handcuffed Tuesday evening in Carter County, Tennessee, after they drove away from Pawleys Island in a black SUV.
Each was charged with unlawfully placing a child at risk or willfully abandoning a child in connection with Saylor’s disappearance and demise, the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post.
“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,” Sheriff Carter Weaver said.
“Saylor was a vulnerable five-year-old child who depended upon the adults responsible for her care and protection. She deserved to be safe. She deserved to be protected.”
The parents misled the authorities about a tracking bracelet that Saylor should have been wearing
Investigations following Saylor’s demise uncovered that she was enrolled in the Washington County Sheriff's Office's Project Lifesaver program, which is designed to help locate people at risk of wandering because of cognitive conditions or other special needs.
Participants wear a small transmitter bracelet that emits an individualized radio frequency that can be tracked.
However, Saylor was not wearing hers when her lifeless body was found. Instead, her bracelets were discovered inside a vehicle parked at the family’s residence in Washington County.
It is still unclear when or by whom it was taken off, but the child never wore it to South Carolina.
Users ripped into John and Geordyn, not only for alleged neglect and leaving the state, but also for their huge age difference.
"Mom can play the postpartum depression card, and Dad can blame toxic masculinity," one person said. Another wrote, "70 and 31? It was all planned, so sad."
A third said, "He was almost a decade older than she is now when she was born."
A fourth commented, "They are definitely guilty of something bc there is NOTHING in this world that could make me leave the state I was visiting without my child's remains!"
Saylor’s parents' arrest affidavit claims they encouraged authorities to use the tracking technology to find her even though they knew she was not wearing the transmitter.
Authorities have said that their actions directed search efforts away from the nearby body of water where she was eventually found.
“Had Saylor been wearing her Project Lifesaver transmitter, we believe the technology could have assisted search teams in locating her much sooner,” said Washington County Sheriff Blake Andis.
“While no technology can guarantee an outcome, every minute matters when a vulnerable child or adult is missing.
The parents have been previously taken into custody over allegations of child harm
Before her arrest on Tuesday, Geordyn shared an undated picture of Saylor on her Facebook account, with a halo above her head and white wings on each side.
“Mommy’s little angel,” the caption on the image said. However, the tribute could not win over the internet amid allegations of neglect and negligence.
One person commented, “How about after someone harms a child once, we NEVER let them around children again.”
This was in reference to John and Geordyn previously facing felony child harm charges in their home state, Virginia.
FitsNews obtained court records that said Washington County’s Department of Social Services removed two minors—one with the initials S.H., matching Saylor’s description, and another one-year-old boy with the initials J.H.—from the couple’s custody in July 2023.
The arrest affidavit stated that both children, as well as the parents, had tested positive for illegal substances. The charges were dismissed in February 2026.
The same month, authorities arrested Geordyn after receiving a call about her relapsing and later locating her inside a vehicle that had run out of gas, acting erratically, while she was with a minor.
Two weeks before Saylor’s disappearance, the court placed the case under a deferred disposition, allowing the final judgment to be postponed while the defendant completed certain requirements.
"We're not protecting our children enough," a heartbroken netizen wrote
