The one-month-old twins are believed to be the youngest known victims of Hurricane Helene. The boys died alongside their mother last week when a large tree fell through the roof of their home in Thomson, Georgia.
Obie Williams, the twins’ grandfather, said he could hear babies crying and branches beating against windows when he spoke with his daughter, Kobe Williams, 27, on the phone last week as the storm tore through the Georgia.
The single mother sat in bed holding her sons Khyzier and Khazmir and chatted on the phone with various family members while the storm raged outside.
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Kobe’s mother, Mary Jones, stayed with her daughter and helped take care of 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 shouted in desperation, but she received no response.
Kobe and the twins were found dead.
“I had seen pictures of their birth and pictures every day since, but I hadn’t yet gone to meet them,” Obie Williams told the Associated Press days after the storm ravaged the east of Georgia. “Now I will never have the opportunity to meet my grandsons again. It’s devastating.”
The babies, born August 20, are the youngest known victims of a storm that caused more than 200 deaths across Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Carolines. Other young victims include a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy from about 50 miles south in Washington County, Georgia.
“She was so excited to be a mother to these beautiful twins,” said Chiquita Jones-Hampton, Kobe’ Jones’ niece. “She was doing a really good job and she was so proud to be their mother.”
Jones-Hampton, who considered Kobe a sister, said the family was shocked and heartbroken.
In Obie Williams’ hometown of Augusta, 30 miles east of his daughter’s home in Thomson, power lines stretched along sidewalks, tree branches blocked roads and utility poles were cracked and broken. The debris left him stranded in his neighborhood near the South Carolina border for a little more than a day after the storm passed.
He said one of his sons dodged fallen trees and downed power lines to keep an eye on Kobe, and he could barely bear to tell his father what he found.
Many of her other 14 children are still without power in their homes across Georgia. Some sought shelter in Atlanta and others went to Augusta to see their fathers and grieve together, he said.
He described his daughter as a kind, social and strong woman. She always had a smile and loved making people laugh, he said.
And she loved to dance, Jones-Hampton said.
“That was my baby,” Williams said. “And everyone loved him.”
