Police have found the stolen SUV used in the kidnapping of 13-year-old Hania Aguilar, but the North Carolina teen is still missing.
The vehicle was found just before 8 a.m. on Thursday less than 10 miles from the mobile home park from which Hania vanished Monday, authorities said.
Investigators asked the public to help find a green 2002/2003 Ford Expedition, which was caught on surveillance cameras near Aguilar’s home minutes after she was abducted. Someone called 911 and said they saw the vehicle backed into the woods, leading to its discovery, the FBI said.
On Thursday, law enforcement said they needed the public’s help again to identify a man walking in the area from where Hania disappeared.
The FBI released a video showing what it described as a man wearing light-colored shoes, a light-colored shirt, and a hoodie walking south on Lambert Street, then turning North on Highway 41/Elizabethtown Highway toward the Rosewood Mobile Home Park.
Senior supervisory resident FBI agent Andy de la Rocha said the man is not a suspect or a person of interest.
“We just want to talk to him because he was the only person walking around that area around that time,” de la Rocha said in a news conference Thursday.
What happened
FBI spokeswoman Shelley Lynch said the vehicle is being processed while authorities try to establish details of Hania’s disappearance.
A Spanish-speaking woman and man told a 911 operator on Monday that a man stole the SUV, which had been running ahead of a morning ride to school, with a child inside, according to a CNN translation.
The FBI, after talking with people at the mobile home park, described her abduction this way: “A witness saw a male subject dressed in all black and wearing a yellow bandana force Hania into a relative’s vehicle that was parked in the driveway.”
Hania is Hispanic, about 5 feet tall and 125 pounds. She has black hair and brown eyes, and was last seen wearing blue jeans and a blue shirt with flowers, according to the FBI, which is investigating the case with the Lumberton Police Department.
Authorities have no reason to think Hania knew her abductor, they said Wednesday afternoon. The girl’s family is cooperating with the investigation, they said.
The FBI is offering a $15,000 reward for information that leads to the girl.
Lumberton is in southeastern North Carolina, near Interstate 95 and is about 95 miles from Raleigh.
