Mum found dead on barge days after being arrested over 911 calls for help

A young mother was found dead on a barge days after calling 911 repeatedly for help – and getting arrested for doing so.

The body of Hailey Silas, 22, was discovered by barge crew over the weekend and her identity was confirmed by the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday. Silas, of Oklahoma, was found on the vessel at the border of Arkansas and Tennessee, more than 400 miles from where she made the 911 calls.

Silas was taken into custody on October 15 after calling 911 from a gas station across from Southland Casino in West Memphis, Arkansas, asking cops to driver her out of the city because something scared her.

She told arriving cops that she was having a ‘panic attack’ and was handcuffed, WREG reported. Silas asked to speak with her parents and to be taken to a ‘psych ward’. On Wednesday of last week, Silas pleaded guilty to communicating a false alarm and was given a suspended sentence.

Three days later, Silas was discovered dead.

‘I was kind of stunned, I guess. I just didn’t necessarily want to believe it,’ her friend Sidney Hernandez told KOCO.

‘She was 22 years old. She was just starting life, and it just kind of flipped so quickly I had to take a moment to take it all in.’

Silas’ mother, LaRena Darrow, told WREG that she tried calling her daughter and that a man she did not recognize answered the phone.

‘And I said, “This is my daughter’s profile, what are you doing on it?” And he said, “Well I’m sorry Hailey doesn’t have a phone anymore,”‘ Darrow said.

Silas’ death remains under investigation and her cause of death has not been released.

The barge departed from Memphis on Friday night and crew members found Silas’ body while doing a routine inspection on Saturday morning, said Shelby County Chief Deputy Anthony Buckner.

‘In my 22 years of working for the sheriff’s office, I don’t think there’s been an investigation of a body on a barge so that’s extremely unusual for us,’ he said.

Darrow called Silas ‘an amazing mother’.

‘My grandson is missing out on such a wonderful person,’ Darrow said. ‘She was such an angel.’

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