Before five-year-old Saylor Hayes was discovered dead in a South Carolina waterway, video showed her mother — who has since been charged — appearing to plead for help as searchers looked for the non-verbal child.
Geordyn Hayes, 31, appeared visibly distressed as she told volunteers she was “praying” her daughter had simply curled up and fallen asleep somewhere. Just days later, Hayes and her 70-year-old husband, John Hayes, were charged in connection with Saylor’s disappearance and death.
In footage obtained by Gab News, Hayes spoke with people assisting in the search Sunday while the family was vacationing in Pawleys Island, saying Saylor might have wandered into a nearby home.
“She loves food. She’s always going to the refrigerator. She has a habit of that,” Hayes told the volunteers.
Hayes also said she had reviewed surveillance footage in an effort to figure out where her daughter may have gone, but the video did not appear to show Saylor’s movements.
“We looked on the camera. We didn’t see her,” Hayes said, sounding panicked.
“I’m just praying… that she’s somewhere and she fell asleep, maybe.”
The Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office first reported Saylor missing at approximately 12:31 p.m. on Sunday.
It’s not clear how long into the search the newly revealed footage of the mom was filmed.
Saylor’s dad, John Hayes, was heard frantically telling dispatchers he needed help as he reported his daughter missing in 911 audio that suggested he was unsure exactly how old she was.
“My little, 4-year-old or 5-year-old girl who’s very autistic, just escaped,” he told dispatchers around 11 a.m, according to the transcript of the call seen by WCBD.
He then revealed “she took off” in a “split second.”
“We had her buckled in the car, and I went inside to get her juice and some more stuff and to leave. I came back out. She’s gone,” he said.
John Hayes frantically told dispatchers, “I need to go look at the water,” as investigators asked for more details.
“Ma’am, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I gotta find her,” he said at one point during the call.
Meanwhile, Geordyn Hayes screamed Saylor’s name while the call was being made.
The search involved “hundreds of people and multiple agencies,” authorities said, before revealing Saylor was found at around 9:45 a.m. Monday in the water behind the Hayes’ rental home.
Saylor was supposed to be wearing a Project Lifesaver transmitter because of her tendency to wander off, but she wasn’t wearing the band when her body was found.
During the search, law enforcement deployed helicopters that would’ve been able to detect the signal from her bracelet.
But the signal was traced to a vehicle outside the family home in Virginia, more than 300 miles away from where they were vacationing.
Cops revealed the device had been removed before the family had left the Old Dominion state.
It’s unclear who removed the device, or when it was removed.
But it would’ve required some force in order to remove the bracelet, law enforcement said.
“It cannot simply be unclasped or removed by the client; the band must be physically cut in order to remove the transmitter,” saide Sheriff Blake Andis of Washington County, Virginia.
John and Geordyn Hayes were arrested in Tennessee and now face charges of unlawfully placing a child at risk/wilfully abandoning a child.
They stand accused of putting the girl “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 a known affinity to water and a history of elopement,” according to the arrest affidavit seen by The Post.
Saylor’s cause of death hasn’t been revealed, with an autopsy scheduled for Sept. 4.
