He Made Their Mother Watch As He Pulled the Trigger The Story of Hayden and Kayden Hiatt

He Made Their Mother Watch As He Pulled the Trigger The Story of Hayden and Kayden Hiatt

Introduction

He always wanted her to wear her makeup and have her hair looking nice if she left the house to go anywhere. She thought he was trying to make her more of a woman and make her feel good about herself. But then he started controlling the times that she could drive her own car as well as their money, and this was just the beginning of what would end in absolute devastation.

I have to warn you, the story I have for you today is beyond heart-shattering. It’s unimaginable what these two baby girls as well as their mother and grandfather had to go through. Who could hurt tiny 5-month-old twins? A monster. A monster who should have been punished long before it came to this. This is the story of Hayden and Kayden Hyatt.

Background of Megan and Rush

Hayden Rose and Kayden Reese Hyatt were twin girls who were born to Megan Hyatt and her boyfriend Rush Wilson, also known as Rush, in Jacksonville, Florida. They were born on June 8th, 2015. Their family lovingly referred to them as Reese and Rose (their middle names), or sometimes would call Hayden “little bit” and Kayden “chunky monkey.”

When 19-year-old Megan Hyatt met Rush Wilson, who was 27 at the time, via online dating, he swept her off her feet. She was smitten; he was the perfect gentleman. He was witty, charming, and attractive—not to mention he had his own car, house, and a good job. It was like a dream come true, and their relationship moved fast. So after only two months of dating, Megan moved in with Rush. They lived together in Rush’s newly bought two-story home on South Shirley Oaks Drive in the Oceanwood neighborhood of Jacksonville. A month later, the couple found out that they were pregnant and expecting twin girls. They were ecstatic.

So, a little bit about Rush Wilson, Hayden and Kayden’s father: he grew up in a small community in Jamaica. He was a quiet child who enjoyed playing cricket, and he excelled in school. Rush also had many friends when he was younger. Now, in his community in Jamaica, Rush’s parents were among the top respected elders, so as he got older, Rush demanded the same respect from everyone in his life, whether he was good to them or not, and this would cause many problems later on down the road.

Rush’s parents divorced when he was growing up, and he lived primarily with his mother. It’s said that his mother was exceptionally hard on Rush as well as his two siblings. After graduating high school, Rush came to the United States and joined the US Navy as an aircraft engine mechanic in 2008.

Now, Megan grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and she was raised as a Mormon. When Megan was a teenager, her parents got a divorce, and she went to live with her father, as Megan was always said to be a bit of a daddy’s girl.

The Escalation of Abuse

Soon after the couple discovered that they were expecting, Rush started to show Megan his true colors. He started getting controlling, having huge outbursts of anger, and was extremely critical of Megan. Now, Rush was respectful and attentive to Megan out in public, but at home, she was never pretty enough, she was never good enough, she was never what he wanted or needed.

One time he bought her a car, and she was not allowed to use it unless he approved of it, even though it was her car. He would also take her phone away when he was angry, sometimes bringing it to work so she would have no phone at all the whole day. Rush would also not let Megan leave the house without her hair done and her makeup on.

Megan never recognized this as abuse though, because Rush had never laid a hand on her. But Rush’s short temper was scary, and he would often get very angry about the most trivial things.

So on June 9th, 2015, Megan gave birth to Kayden Reese and Hayden Rose. She was a proud new mom, loving her new role more than she even expected, and she absolutely adored her little girls. Even though Rush’s treatment of Megan was only getting worse, she wanted their marriage to work. She did not want to just give up because she had hoped that things would improve, and she wanted the girls to have a normal family life with both a mom and dad who were together. At one point, about a month before she gave birth, Megan even posted on Facebook: “He’s my rock, my heart, my love, my ride or die, my handsome man, my one and only, my forever.”

Only three days after Megan had given birth, Rush was asking her when she was going to lose the weight—they hadn’t even left the hospital yet! And Rush would even get jealous of Megan paying attention to the girls while they were at the hospital because he wanted the attention (these were newborns!).

Megan kept hoping that things would change, but Rush’s abuse and disrespect only got worse. One time the couple was having an argument because Megan didn’t have dinner ready on time, and Rush threw a coffee table at her. On top of all this, Rush would also degrade Megan with the most offensive insults, and he would corner her up against walls when he was angry. He even started demanding that she have sex with him every day. He would also wake her up in the middle of the night just to scream at her and tell her that she was useless and she was a terrible mother because she didn’t earn any money (she was a stay-at-home mom for his children!).

Megan was also terrified to ask for even the simplest things, like toothpaste when they ran out, because Rush would demean her for not having enough money herself—even though it was because he was controlling it and she had no choice.

Now, Megan’s mother would say that she had a gut feeling that there was something about Rush, and that he and her daughter definitely did not have a healthy relationship. She could tell that there were problems, and she knew that Rush had previously cornered Megan as well as broken things in rages of anger.

Rush’s Violent Past

Megan was not the first woman that Rush had treated poorly. There were many other women in Rush’s past who he had treated just as bad. Rush had laid his hands on women before, as well as thrown things at them, broken their cell phones, and he had been extremely controlling, insecure, and manipulative. He constantly accused anyone he was with of being with other men and cheating on him. He also threatened every woman from his past that if they ever told on him for anything he had done and ruined his career in the Navy, that he would kill them.

One of the women that Rush had dated back in 2009 he had actually met on a dating site (this was one of his favorite places to meet women). He would charm them and talk about his Navy career and how he was looking for a lifelong companion. He would lure these women in; many of these women he would lie to, saying he didn’t have a girlfriend or a Facebook page, but he had both of those. He was also known to get very irritated and upset when his partner didn’t pay enough attention to him.

In 2011, Rush had actually gotten married to a woman named Jamie Lewis. Now, this relationship had quickly deteriorated; by the end, his wife had gone into hiding from him. Apparently, one night in the middle of the night, Rush had chased her and her three-year-old daughter out of the house wielding a hammer!

After his divorce, Rush was back to online dating, looking for his next girlfriend or victim. He met a woman by the name of Danielle Johnson in the fall of 2012. She was a survivor of domestic violence and was just looking for someone to love and care for her and her daughter, but that is not at all what she got.

Now, when she first met Rush, he had brought her flowers, opened doors for her, and done all kinds of things that made him look like a gentleman. This was something she was not used to, and since Rush was so attentive and sweet, he swept her off her feet fast, just like he did to Megan. Danielle would say that Rush was always interested in knowing what she did throughout the day and knowing many details about it. She didn’t realize that this was just the beginning of him trying to control her.

Danielle and her daughter moved in with Rush a month after they started dating, and this is when the control and abuse started. Danielle would say he forced her to watch gory movies as well as have sex with him whenever he wanted. He also demanded that she be the one to do all the chores around the house. If she upset or ignored him, he would attack her. He would yell at her, saying, “I’m from Jamaica, we demand respect! You don’t walk away from your man when he’s talking to you.” Rush would also criticize her appearance, calling her fat and ugly, just like he did with his other victims.

Danielle decided to stay with Rush because she felt like there was a chance he could become the man that she had first met and fell in love with again. Danielle would write this awful behavior off as Rush just being scared because he had been cheated on when he was deployed in the past (she knew this because when he was looking for forgiveness after a fight, he would tearfully tell her all about this terrible part of his past so that he would look like the victim).

Danielle’s relationship with Rush ended when she survived an attack from him. Luckily for her, an older neighbor of hers had saved her life. Danielle had had enough of Rush and tried to leave him one day in April of 2013, but Rush wasn’t having this. He grabbed Danielle by the hair and dragged her out onto the street. It was freezing out, and Danielle was only dressed in panties and a small tank top. He then put an assault rifle between her eyes, but luckily did not shoot; he instead turned around to walk back to the house.

Now, Danielle’s daughter had seen this all happening and she had run to a neighbor’s house to get help for her mother. This neighbor was named Christine Jacobs. Christine immediately took action, grabbed a blanket, went over to Danielle, wrapped it around her, and helped her up off the street. Then the neighbor not only yelled at Rush for what he had done, but she also invited Danielle and her daughter into her house to collect themselves and get dressed.

A little while later the same morning, Danielle was walking her daughter to the bus stop, and Rush came up behind her and asked if she would still be his girlfriend, to which she of course said no. He for some reason accepted this answer this time and just turned around and walked away, and that was that. Police later charged him with domestic battery and strangulation, and Danielle got out an order of protection against him.

Unfortunately, his charges would be dropped down to a misdemeanor, and Rush got off with just probation and had to attend a batterer intervention course (which he passed, but I also heard was only an hour long, so how much good did that do?). The State Attorney’s Office had said that Danielle agreed to dropping Rush’s charges down to a misdemeanor because she didn’t want to tarnish his Navy career. This was not at all true.

One of Rush’s ex-girlfriends actually had stood up to him after he attacked her and pointed a rifle at her in 2014; she had actually shot him in the groin during the struggle! She was then hit with criminal charges and a possible prison sentence, even though she was the one who had first been attacked. Only months later did the prosecutors finally drop the charges after her attorney finally convinced them that she had only done it in self-defense.

The Final Breakaway and Tragedy

So Rush’s long history of being controlling and abusive in relationships clearly had only gotten worse over time. And given that his last relationship prior to Megan had ended violently, what was to come for Megan when she decided one day in November of 2015 to leave Rush for good would be his most savage and atrocious attack yet.

On November 13th, 2015, Rush went off to work, and Megan decided to make her move. She was going to take Hayden and Kayden and leave Rush for good this time. This was now her third attempt to leave the abusive relationship with Rush, but the other times he had sweet-talked her into staying. This time, she had had enough; she was leaving.

Rush was on active duty at NAS Jacksonville that day, so Megan called her father, Travis Hyatt, as well as her best friend to come over and help her pack her things. And Megan made the unfortunate decision to call Rush and tell him that she was going to be leaving. He was irate and he started saying all kinds of awful things to Megan, even saying at one point that he would kill her. But then he started asking if he could see the girls one more time. In the middle of him screaming at her, Megan said that she would wait there until he had come home at the end of his shift so that he could see the girls and say goodbye to them. But she really wasn’t going to do this; she had no intention of doing this whatsoever—she was going to get her stuff and get out of there.

But in the middle of her boxing things up, Rush decided to leave his station early without permission and he sped home. When he got there, Megan could tell he was fuming. So Megan, trying to calm him down, asked if he would go in the house with her and feed the girls. He agreed, and they walked into the house, and Megan asked her father to step outside so that the two could talk alone. Her dad said sure, but, “I’ll be right outside the door if you need anything.”

Megan and Rush talked while they were feeding the babies, but Rush was so upset that he was shaking violently—so much so that the bottle was going in and out of the baby’s mouth that he was feeding. He kept begging Megan to stay; she refused. Then at one point he asked Megan, “So that’s it? So this is it?” And Megan said, “Yes, I’m done.”

He then jumped up off of the sofa and went over to the closet, grabbed his AR-15, and said to Megan, “I’ll show you what done means.”

Rush told Megan that she was going to watch her father die. So Megan, knowing that her father was right outside the door, told him, “Dad, don’t come in! Dad, run, don’t come in!” But her dad, being the protective father that he was, immediately wanted to go inside and make sure that she was okay. It was at that point that Rush yelled, “Watch your dad! Watch him!” and then he shot Megan’s dad.

Then Rush shifted the barrel of the gun and pointed it right at Megan, who was holding the girls. Megan turned their heads away from Rush so they couldn’t see what was happening, but he opened fire. Both infants, who had been crying in terror, were hit in the back of their heads, and their crying instantly stopped.

Megan was hit a total of seven times in her face, wrist, midsection, and leg. Even after all that, Megan was still alive, but she needed to pretend to be dead because she knew that Rush would come after her again if he thought that she was still alive. So that’s what she did, until Rush walked out of the house and turned the AR-15 on himself.

Megan’s best friend was able to escape during this whole ordeal. After Rush had wiped out everyone including himself, Megan had to crawl through the blood that was on the floor to her father, who was still clinging to life. Her dad was able to talk to her and tell her how much he loved her. He also said that he and her baby girls would watch over her and the rest of the family from heaven. He also told Megan to tell her twin brother how much he loved him. Megan laid on her father in an attempt to stop the heavy bleeding, but unfortunately it was too much, and he later passed away as well.

The Aftermath and Legal Battle

Even after being shot seven times, Megan was able to grab her father’s cell phone and call 911. Luckily, her friend who had been in the house had already escaped and gone to a neighbor’s house and called 911 herself as well.

Megan was rushed to UF Health Jacksonville. By the time she got to the hospital, she had nearly died from all the blood that she had lost. And after five life-saving surgeries and nearly bleeding out three times, Megan says that the emotional trauma alone should have been fatal. She somehow survived being shot seven times, including one time in the eye, and on top of all that, she lost her father and her precious baby girls.

(Audio clip: “Rush wanted to destroy Megan’s life and have her watch it be destroyed… He at now man shot himself, he shot himself too yeah…” Steven Green, says Megan Hyatt’s friend, was already on the phone with 911 when she rang his doorbell: “I heard my friend, she was screaming, and her dog was packing up stuff in the truck, and he heard… he heard her screaming so he went inside and I heard her scream ‘Dad, don’t come in here!’ and then the shots went off and I saw her father go down.”)

Surrounded by the bodies of her loved ones, Megan Hyatt managed to get to a phone and call 911: “My boyfriend shot me, my twin, my dad, and my best friend, please come… my daughter is standing here bleeding out and bleeding out and I think my best friend is bleeding out and my kids are…” You can hear the moment when police get there while she’s still on the phone with 911: “Ma’am, here, right here, everybody!”

The emotional pain must have just been excruciating. He made her watch as he shot her father and her baby girls. And on top of all that trauma, doctors told Megan that she would most likely never walk again, but after months of practice, Megan did learn to walk again!

Megan says she lost a third of her liver, her kidneys were damaged, she lost part of her pancreas and part of her gallbladder. She also lost part of her large and small intestine, and her colon had to be rerouted. Since then, she has undergone over 25 surgeries, most of them being to her leg. She also lost her left eye and now has a prosthetic one.

For months after this incident, Rush’s family harassed and belittled Megan, which is beyond belief—he killed his baby girls! Several of Rush’s victims questioned whether authorities knew about Rush’s violent past, including the US Navy, and if so, couldn’t they have done more to prevent this absolute horror that went down that November? The Navy said he got counseling as well as completed the batterer’s intervention course, which like I said wasn’t a very long course, so what does it do? A Navy spokesperson said that Rush’s Navy command had taken appropriate administrative action when notified about the incidents in 2013 and 2014.

Megan believes that the US Navy could have done more to prevent this tragedy, and she filed a lawsuit against them. She questioned why no one had called the police when they had clearly heard Rush on the phone saying that he was going to kill Megan (because Megan heard people in the background telling Rush to get off the phone). Megan’s case asked for money for pain and suffering as well as her medical expenses. Megan knew he was on duty and so she felt safe packing up and leaving, but she wants to know why, when he left his duty station that day without approval before his shift was over, no one called her to tell her? No one stopped him that day, and no one had stopped Rush previously despite all the red flags that he exhibited.

Unfortunately, Megan’s lawsuit and an amended version of the lawsuit were both thrown out. In the court’s response for Megan Hyatt versus the United States of America, the explanation includes this: “The general principle in Florida is that a party has no legal duty to control the conduct of a third person to prevent that person from causing harm to another.” Megan has decided to not appeal.

Healing and Advocacy

Megan Hyatt, who now lives with PTSD, tells others who are in similar situations to get out now: “Clean out your bank account, don’t worry about your things, just get yourself out. You can buy a new TV, you can buy a new mattress, don’t worry about those things.”

And thanks to many generous donations, Megan was able to bury Hayden and Kayden in beautiful white caskets next to their grandfather, Travis Hyatt, at the Ponte Vedra Cemetery in Palm Valley, Florida. Their funeral services were held at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in St. Johns, Florida.

Megan now visits the cemetery where they’re buried all the time and will sit and read to the girls, but she says it’s so sad that she’ll never be able to give them their first bite of rice cereal, or she’ll never be able to hear their first “mama” or their first laugh.

Since then, Megan has become a big advocate for domestic violence victims and tells others that abuse doesn’t have to be physical, and other kinds of abuse can also turn physical too. She has a strong social media presence where she helps others, and every day Megan makes sure that her daughters and her father will never be forgotten.

Well, thank you for listening to all of Hayden and Kayden’s story today, along with the rest of their family. Why was Rush not discharged from the military after previous incidents? He was just given a slap on the wrist with probation and a 1-hour course on DV. The crimes he had committed before were not minor offenses—he nearly killed another woman! He should not have been there. And how can someone murder their new, helpless babies just to get back at their mother? It’s one of the most vile and heartless things I’ve ever heard. Megan is an extremely strong and amazing woman; if I were her, I don’t think I could do it, and now she’s even helping others, which is just so amazing.