A Mississippi family is in mourning after the untimely loss of their 6-year-old. Gracelynn Vick went missing while playing outside on the family farm. Her parents quickly noticed the girl was missing, and immediately set out to find her. Along with police and other community members, they searched with little success.
Eventually, members of the search team found the girl’s body. Unfortunately, she was dead. Based on the weather, police deduced that she likely overheated. This is the third loss of a child for the family in almost as many years.
Gracelynn Vick went outside to play around noon on Sunday, April 13, 2025. She disappeared a short time later, the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. According to the statement, authorities were searching for the girl with ATVs, a helicopter, and on foot.
In an update, authorities announced members of the search party found the girl around 6 p.m. the same day “in the vicinity of the residence.” Unfortunately, she had died.
“There were absolutely no signs of foul play,” Harrison County Sheriff Matt Haley said in a press conference on Thursday, April 17. Gracelynn Vick was found in a barrel that the family usually used to store animal feed, WJW reported.
Footage viewed showed Gracelynn climbing into the barrel and closing the lid. She was unable to open it from the inside. “The residence had security cameras that covered the area where the barrel was located,” Haley said.
“There was no way to get to that area without coming into the view of the camera. All family and volunteers in the area of that barrel at any time were not seen tampering [with] it.”
According to Haley, the autopsy didn’t show any signs of abuse or trauma. It was hot the day Gracelynn died. And police believe she “would have experienced a combination of heat stress and limited oxygen supply inside the barrel, which would have led to her death.” Haley said the conditions “would be similar to that of a child being stuck in a hot car during the summer.”
Authorities are still determining the exact cause of death for the young girl.
This isn’t the only tragedy Vick’s family has dealt with in recent years. The Biloxi Sun Herald reported that Gracelynn’s older sister Victoria died in a crash in 2024 at the age of 13. And her older brother, Larry Hart died in 2021 of a medical condition. He was only 17 years old.
