911 Call Captures Panic After 5-Year-Old Autistic Girl Vanishes in South Carolina

A 911 call placed shortly after a 5-year-old autistic girl vanished from a South Carolina rental home recorded her father telling dispatchers she was missing and that he needed to search the water nearby.

The urgent search for Saylor Hayes came to a tragic end Monday when authorities found her body in waters near Pawleys Island, South Carolina. One day later, her parents were arrested in Tennessee.

According to the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office, John Herb Hayes III, 70, and Geordyn Nichole Hayes, 31, were taken into custody Tuesday evening in Tennessee and booked into the Carter County Jail on fugitive-from-justice charges.

The couple is accused under South Carolina law of placing their daughter in danger or abandoning her.

John Hayes called 911 just before 11:40 a.m. on Aug. 30 from a rental property on Old Waccamaw Drive in Pawleys Island.

“I need help,” Hayes told the dispatcher. “My little 4-year-old, 5-year-old girl, she’s very autistic, just escaped.”

Hayes told the dispatcher Saylor was white, with brown hair and green eyes, and said he believed she was wearing a bluish bathing suit. The dispatcher then asked whether the child would respond if someone called her name.

“She doesn’t talk,” Hayes said. “She’s nonverbal.”

“This is bad,” he later said. “This is real bad.”

Hayes said the family had been preparing to go to the beach and that Saylor had been buckled up in a vehicle. He said he went inside to get juice and other items before returning to find her gone.

“We had her in the car, buckled in,” Hayes said. “And I went inside to get her juice and some more stuff. And to leave, I came back out. She’s gone.”

As the call continued, Hayes began searching the property and said he needed to check the water.

“Yeah, I need to go look at the water,” he said. “I’ve got to look around. I’ve got to find her.”

Georgetown County dispatch records show a deputy arrived within minutes. Dispatchers noted that the caller was near water and later recorded that Hayes was searching the house because he could not stay on the phone while looking for Saylor.

The records show officials also sought information about a Project Lifesaver tracking device. A caller reported that Saylor had the device, but Washington County, Virginia, had the code needed to use it. Dispatchers contacted Virginia authorities and worked to obtain the equipment and the device’s frequency.

Search crews also moved quickly into the water. Dispatch notes say command was established outside the home with personnel watching the water. The response included a South Carolina Department of Natural Resources dive team, drones, a marine unit and a helicopter.

That early search activity is notable because arrest warrants allege that John Hayes and Geordyn Hayes directed search efforts toward a tracking device they knew Saylor was not wearing and away from a nearby body of water. The warrants allege the device had been removed before the family left Virginia.

The dispatch records do not establish what the parents knew about the device or what instructions they may have given searchers. They do show that law enforcement pursued both the tracking technology and the water during the initial response.

Saylor wandered from a rental home in the Hagley Estates community of Pawleys Island late Sunday morning, the sheriff’s office said. More than 200 residents searched nearby properties and guarded local docks while deputies, firefighters, state agents and other agencies joined the effort.

Department of Natural Resources agents found Saylor’s body at about 9:45 a.m. Monday in waters near where she was last seen, the sheriff’s office said. A later entry in the call-for-service record noted that the child had been found and directed DNR personnel to take her to the morgue.

The warrants do not state Saylor’s cause or manner of death.

The sheriff’s office said John and Geordyn Hayes will be returned to South Carolina after extradition proceedings.