Twin three-year-old girls in foster care found dead inside hot car in Georgia
HINESVILLE, GEORGIA: Police are investigating after twin three-year-old girls were found dead inside a hot car in Hinesville.
Deputies from the Hinesville Police Department found Raelynn Keyes and Payton Keyes inside of a vehicle in the backyard of a Griffin Park residence shortly after 1:30 pm on Sunday after someone called 911 to report that the children, who had been reported missing, had been found unresponsive, according to WTOC.
They were declared dead by first responders, with weather reports indicating that the temperature outside had been around 92 degrees Fahrenheit at the time. This means that the temperature inside the car could have reached as high as the mid-140s.
Captain Tracey Howard with the HPD revealed that the siblings were living in a foster home and that the house behind which they were found was one where they often spent time. He said they had been with their foster parents and two other siblings for around a year-and-a-half, and that the people living at the Griffin Park residence had some kind of relationship with the foster parents that they're currently trying to figure.
"The foster parent for the children was the first person to call 911," Howard said. "Other members of the family, to include the person who resides at that residence, were all actively looking for the two girls, because initially, it was discovered that they were just not where they should have been inside the home."
He said that the foster parents are still in a state of shock and that currently, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Liberty County Sheriff’s Department, and the HPD are all working on the investigation to determine how the children ended up inside the car.
"We’re putting all of those pieces of that puzzle together to try and make a determination of what led to their death," he said.
An autopsy is expected to be completed by Monday, and Howard said investigators are waiting for the full results of the autopsy report to move further.
"It’s always difficult for us to see something like this," he said. "Most of us are parents, just like the parents of these children, so it’s hard not to be impacted emotionally when events like this take place. We’re all human."