Obie Williams said he could hear babies crying and branches battering the windows when he spoke with his daughter on the phone last week as Hurricane Helene tore through her rural Georgia town.
Kobe Williams, 27, and her month-old twin boys were hunkering down at their trailer home in Thomson, Georgia, with her mother, Mary Jones, who had been helping her take care of the babies. Williams’ father sensed his daughter was fearing for her safety, and she promised her father she would heed his advice to shelter in the bathroom with her babies until the storm passed.
The single mother had been sitting in bed holding sons Khyzier and Khazmir and chatting on the phone with various family members while the storm raged outside.
Minutes later, she was no longer answering their calls.
Jones, who was on the other side of the trailer, described hearing a loud crash as a tree fell through the roof of her daughter’s bedroom.
“Kobe, Kobe, answer me, please,” Jones cried out in desperation, but she received no response.
Kobe and the twins 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.”
The babies, born Aug. 20, are the youngest known victims of a storm that had claimed 200 lives across Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas as of Thursday. Among the other young victims are a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy from about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south in Washington County, Georgia.
“She was so excited to be a mother of those beautiful twin boys,” said Chiquita Jones-Hampton, Kobe’ Jones’ niece. “She was doing such a good job and was so proud to be their mom.”
Jones-Hampton, who considered Kobe a sister, said the family is in shock and heartbroken.
In Obie Williams’ home city of Augusta, 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of his daughter’s home in Thomson, power lines stretched along the sidewalks, tree branches blocked the roads and utility poles lay cracked and broken. The debris left him trapped in his neighborhood near the South Carolina border for a little over a day after the storm barreled through.
He said one of his sons dodged fallen trees and downed power lines to check on Kobe, and he could barely bear to tell his father what he found.
Many of his 14 other children are still without power in their homes across Georgia. Some have sought refuge in Atlanta, and others have traveled to Augusta to see their father and mourn together, he said.
He described his daughter as a lovable, social 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 everybody loved her.”
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This story has been updated to clarify the circumstances of the deaths after further conversations with family members.
Hannah Schoenbaum, The Associated Press