LUMBERTON — The search for a 13-year-old girl abducted Monday continues and local police and the FBI continue to plead for the public’s help.
“It breaks my heart to stand here five days later and not have Hania safe here with us,” Lumberton Police Chief Michael McNeill said during a press conference Friday.
Hania Noelia Aguilar was kidnapped about 7 a.m. Monday from Rosewood Mobile Home Park, located at 3525 Elizabethtown Road in Lumberton, as she waited to be driven to school.
In particular, the Lumberton Police Department and the FBI still are asking for the public’s help in identifying the man shown walking in a surveillance video near the mobile home park about the time Aguilar was abducted.
The video, obtained Thursday by investigators, shows what appears to be a man wearing light-colored shoes, a light-colored shirt, and a hoodie walking down Lambeth Street and then turning left on Elizabethtown Road and walking toward Rosewood Mobile Home Park. The FBI has released the video and it can be viewed online at www.fbi.gov.
“Twenty-four hours later and we still do not have the identity of the man seen walking in the video,” C. Andrew de la Rocha, a FBI supervisory senior resident agent, said Friday during a news conference.
The agent asked the public to help identify the man because he may have seen something or know something that could help investigators find Aguilar. Multiple vehicles are seen in the video driving past the man, and the drivers are asked to call the dedicated tip line, 910-272-5871, if they know the man, know something that can help identify the man or if they saw something or know something that can help bring Aguilar home.
“Someone knows this man, and you have to call us,” de la Rocha said.
Gov. Roy Cooper entered the search for Aguilar on Friday, offering a $5,000 reward.
The FBI already is offering up to $15,000 for information that leads to the finding of the Lumberton Junior High eighth-grader.
The search has widened at the site off Quincey Drive Road near Alamac Road where the SUV used in the abduction of Aguilar, de la Rocha said. Search parties organized by the N.C. Emergency Management Office have searched the area within one mile of where the green, 2002/2003 Ford Expedition was found. The SUV, found Thursday, has been gone over with at “fine-tooth comb” in the hunt for evidence and clues, according to de la Rocha.
The agent asked property owners inside the search radius around the SUV to search their sheds and outbuildings.
“You know your property better than us,” de la Rocha said. “You know what doesn’t belong there.”
The property owners are asked to call the tip line if they find something that doesn’t belong on their property.
The agent said leads are found every day and are being followed, but he declined to elaborate.
“We just have to bring Hania home,” de la Rocha said.
