The month-old twin boys are believed to be the youngest known victims Hurricane Helene. The boys and their mother died last week when a large tree fell through the roof of their home in Thomson, Georgia.
Obie Williams, the twins’ grandfather, said he heard babies crying and branches hitting the windows as he spoke to his daughter, Kobe Williams, 27, on the phone last week as the storm swept through Georgia.
The single mother sat in bed with her sons Khyzier and Khazmir in her arms and was on the phone with several family members as the storm raged outside.
AP
Kobe’s mother, Mary Jones, stayed with her daughter and helped her care for the babies. She was on the other side of the trailer when she heard a loud crash as a tree fell through the roof of her daughter’s bedroom.
“Kobe, Kobe, answer me, please,” Jones cried desperately, but she got no answer.
Kobe and the twins were found dead.
“I had seen pictures when they were born and pictures every day since, but I hadn’t been there to meet them yet,” Obie Williams told The Associated Press, days after the storm ravaged eastern Georgia. ‘Now I will never meet my grandsons again. It’s devastating.’
The babies, born on August 20, are the youngest known storm victims claimed more than 200 lives in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas. The other young victims include a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy, about 50 miles south of Washington County, Georgia.
“She was so excited to become a mother to these beautiful twin boys,” said Chiquita Jones-Hampton, Kobe’ Jones’ niece. “She did so well and was so proud to be their mother.”
Jones-Hampton, who considered Kobe a sister, said the family is shocked and heartbroken.
In Obie Williams’ hometown of Augusta, 30 miles east of his daughter’s home in Thomson, power lines stretched along the sidewalks, tree limbs blocked the roads and utility poles lay cracked and broken. Debris trapped him in his neighborhood, near the South Carolina border, for a little more than a day after the storm passed through.
He said one of his sons dodged fallen trees and downed power lines to watch Kobe, and he could barely bear to tell his father what he had found.
Many of his 14 other children are still without power in their homes in Georgia. Some have taken refuge in Atlanta, and others have traveled to Augusta to see their fathers and grieve together, he said.
He described his daughter as a sweet, sociable and strong woman. She always had a smile and loved to make people laugh, he said.
And she loved to dance, Jones-Hampton said.
“That was my baby,” Williams said. “And everyone loved her.”
