The 5-year-old non-verbal autistic girl found dead on her South Carolina vacation died of injuries consistent with drowning, according to an autopsy released Friday.
The examination found Saylor Hayes died of pulmonary edema, a condition where fluid builds up in the lungs making it hard to breathe, WMBF reported, citing the Georgetown County Coroner’s Office.
There were no signs of visible trauma the little girl’s body, which was found Aug. 31 in a waterway not far from her family’s vacation home on Pawleys Island, according to the autopsy conducted by Medical University of South Carolina.
No official cause of death has been determined yet — and the final autopsy report will be released in around eight to 10 weeks.
Saylor, who is from Virginia, was found wearing a bathing suit and a strap attached to her ankle which resembled a child’s wrist tether, GCCO said.
The initial autopsy results come just days after the 5-year-old’s parents, John Herb Hayes III, 70, and his wife Geordyn Nichole Hayes, 31, were arrested in Tennessee on Tuesday.
Both parents face charges of unlawfully placing a child at risk and willfully abandoning a child in connection with the death of their daughter.
The girl, 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.
Saylor had been wearing a monitoring device since 2024, but the device had been removed before the family left Virginia, according to her parents’ arrest affidavit.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
