Autopsy shows 5-year-old autistic girl died from drowning; parents charged
An autopsy revealed that Saylor Hayes, a 5-year-old non-verbal autistic child found dead in South Carolina, died of pulmonary edema consistent with drowning, and her parents have been arrested on child-abandonment charges.
The Georgetown County Coroner’s Office, in partnership with the Medical University of South Carolina, concluded that Saylor Hayes died from pulmonary edema, a condition linked to drowning, after her body was recovered from a nearby waterway on August 31. The autopsy found no visible trauma on the child’s body. Saylor, a non-verbal autistic girl from Virginia, was discovered wearing only a bathing suit and an ankle strap resembling a child’s tether.
Her parents, John Herb Hayes III, 70, and Geordyn Nichole Hayes, 31, were arrested in Tennessee and face charges of unlawfully placing a child at risk and willful abandonment. The girl was supposed to wear a Project Lifesaver monitoring device, which had been removed before the family’s trip. The final autopsy report is expected in eight to ten weeks.
Why it matters
The case highlights child safety failures and legal accountability for parental neglect.
In this story
