A 34-year-old man was arrested Saturday morning and charged with the abduction, rape and murder of a 13-year-old North Carolina girl.
Michael McLellan was already in police custody on unrelated kidnapping charges when he was charged with 10 additional felonies in connection with the death of Hania Aguilar, including first-degree murder, first-degree forcible rape, first-degree kidnapping and concealment of death, according the FBI in Charlotte, N.C.
Hania's family had been getting ready to drop her off at her school bus stop the morning of Nov. 5 when a man wearing a bandanna forced her inside her aunt's idling sport-utility vehicle.
Her disappearance sparked a search spanning two states, but they did not find the teenager's body until Nov. 27, in a pond not far from the trailer park where she lived with her family.
The North Carolina State crime lab performed preliminary test results on Hania's body while the FBI's lab in Quantico, Va., conducted a forensic exam on the stolen SUV, recovered a few days after the kidnapping on Nov. 8. An autopsy has not yet been completed.
The investigation also involved nearly 500 interviews and more than 850 leads, though officers would not say what exactly led them to suspect McLellan.
McLellan is to make his initial court appearance Monday morning.
