Obie Williams could hear babies crying and branches battering the windows when he answered his daughter’s daily phone call last week as Hurricane Helene tore through her rural Georgia town.
Kobe Williams, 27, and her newborn twin boys were hunkering down at their trailer home in Thomson, Georgia, and starting to fear for their safety. She promised her father she would heed his advice to shelter in the bathroom with her month-old babies until the storm passed.
Minutes later, she was no longer answering her family’s calls.
One of her brothers dodged fallen trees and downed power lines to check on her later that day, and he could barely bear to tell his father what he saw.
A large tree had crashed through the roof, crushing Kobe and causing her to fall on top of infant sons Khyzier and Khazmir. All three were found dead.
“I’d seen pictures when they were born and pictures every day since, but I hadn’t made it out there yet to meet them,” Obie Williams told The Associated Press days after the storm ravaged eastern Georgia . “Now I’ll never get to meet my grandsons. It’s devastating.”