‘She loved them so much’: Thomson mom, babies lost in storm
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THOMSON, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Georgia father Obie Lee Williams spent every morning looking forward to a daily phone call from his daughter.
But their last conversation was fraught with fear as Kobe Williams, 27, told her father that she and her newborn twins were hunkering down alone at their trailer home in Thomson as Hurricane Helene ripped through the southeast.
Before hanging up to check on his other kids, he urged her to shelter in the bathroom with her month-old babies until the storm ed. 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.
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A large tree had fallen through the roof, crushing Kobe and causing her to fall on top of infant sons Khyzier and Khazmir. All three were found dead.
“It was horrifying,” said Tamara Williams, Kobe’s sister. “It was the worst day of my life. Getting that phone call and then my nephews, it was terrible.”
She was a brand new mother to the boys, who her family says, quickly became her whole world.
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“She loved them so much,” said Tamara. “They were her pride and her joy. She was a new mom, it was a new experience for her and she was doing well.”
Tamara says when the storm hit, Kobe was with her mother at the mobile home.
“It’s just been a lot of wrapping my mind around everything. Being without power and without water we could deal with that, but losing three family at one time, infants, it’s been a big impact,” said Tamara.
The babies, born Aug. 20, are the youngest known victims of a storm that had claimed 200 lives as of Thursday. Among the other young victims are a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy from Washington County, Georgia.
“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 Lee Williams told The Associated Press days after the storm ravaged eastern Georgia. “Now I’ll never get to meet my grandsons. It’s devastating.”
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John Savage said his grandparents were found hugging one another in the bed, adding that the family thinks it was God’s plan to take them together, rather than one suffer without the other.
In the elder Williams’ home city of Augusta, 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.
Kobe, a single mother nursing newborns, had told her family it wasn’t possible for her to evacuate with such young babies, her father said.
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. They are waiting for the bodies to be released by the county coroner and for roads to be cleared before arranging a funeral.
Williams described his daughter as a lovable, social and strong young woman who cared deeply about her large family. She always had a smile on her face and loved to make people laugh, he said.
She was studying to be a nursing assistant but had taken time off from school to give birth to her sons.
“That was my baby,” her father said. “And everybody loved her.”
Chief Stephen Sewell with McDuffie County EMA responded to the call that morning. First responders say they’ve never seen a storm like this.
“All we can do is be there for them, pray for them and pray for everybody else that’s suffering during this time,” said Sewell.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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