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A 5-year-old non-verbal autistic girl found dead during her family’s South Carolina vacation over the summer died by drowning, but questions remain about how the tragedy unfolded and if it was a homicide.
Saylor Hayes cause of death was determined to be asphyxia due to drowning, with child neglect identified as a contributory factor, the Georgetown County Coroner’s Office announced Monday.
However, Saylor’s manner of death has been classified as undetermined, the coroner said in the conclusion of its investigation.
“This classification reflects the inability to conclusively determine whether Saylor’s death was accidental or the result of a homicidal act,” the coroner said in a statement to WCBD.
There were no signs of visible trauma on the little girl’s body, which was discovered on Aug. 31 in the Waccamaw River near her family’s vacation rental on Pawleys Island, according to the autopsy conducted by the Medical University of South Carolina.
The findings come more than two months after Saylor’s parents — John Herb Hayes III, 70, and his wife, Geordyn Nichole Hayes, 31 — were arrested in Tennessee.
The parents, from Virginia, were slapped with charges of unlawfully placing a child at risk and willfully abandoning a child in connection with their 5-year-old’s death.
The arrest came just hours after mom Geordyn Hayes paid tribute to her dead daughter.
“Mommy’s little angel,” she wrote alongside a picture of Saylor with a halo above her head.
The couple, who have been married for five years, have been accused of putting Saylor “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,” the arrest affidavit states.
It is unclear why Saylor’s parents fled over 300 miles north to the Volunteer State after her death. They were released to the custody of the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office shortly after their arrest.
The couple has had previous run-ins with the law, including July 2023 charges of two counts each of felony child abuse involving reckless or willful disregard for human life for an incident in Washington County, Virginia. That case was dismissed in early 2026.
Saylor, who was supposed to wear a Project Lifesaver transmitter because she tended to wander off, was not wearing the device when she walked away from the property during the family’s vacation.
Authorities said the Project Lifesaver transmitter appeared to have been removed before she left the family’s home in Virginia. It’s unclear who removed the tracker or when.
The little girl was reported missing on Aug. 30, sparking an “intensive search involving hundreds of people and multiple agencies.”
She was found the following morning in the waterway wearing a one-piece bathing suit and a white lanyard, authorities said.
