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, the AP reports.
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 south in Washington County, Georgia. 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. "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," he says. "Now I'll never get to meet my grandsons. It's devastating."
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