The parents of a nonverbal five-year-old girl have been arrested after the young girl was found dead in a pond near the family’s South Carolina rental home.

John Herb Hayes III and Geordyn Nichole Haynes were taken into custody Tuesday night in connection with their daughter Saylor Hayes’ disappearance and death, the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office in South Carolina announced.

They now each face a charge of unlawfully placing a child at risk/willfully abandoning a child.

Authorities allege in arrest warrants that the parents placed Saylor ‘at an unreasonable risk of harm, affecting her life and safety by failing to provide supervision and safeguards appropriate for a nonverbal, autistic five-year-old child with known affinity to water and [a] history of elopement.’

The warrants note that the girl had been fitted with a Project Lifesaver transmitter by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia, where the family lives, but was not wearing it when she wandered from a rental home on Sunday.

‘The child was subsequently left unsupervised within approximately 15 meters of a body of water,’ the warrants state, noting that the tracking device was later located inside a vehicle at the family’s home in Virginia. 

The couple also allegedly misdirected search efforts.

‘After the child was discovered missing, the defendant encouraged search efforts to be directed toward the use of tracking technology, despite knowing the child was not wearing the monitoring device,’ authorities claim.

‘The defendant further directed search efforts away from the nearby body of water’ where Saylor’s body was eventually located. 

Saylor Hayes, five, was found dead in a pond in South Carolina on Monday morning

An arrest warrant accuses her parents, John Herb Hayes III and Geordyn Nichole Hayes, of unlawfully placing a child at risk

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.