An Ohio grand jury has indicted a man accused of picking up a 12-year-old Georgia girl he met online on several felony charges, including rape, according to court officials.
Antonio Agustin-Ailon, 34, a Guatemalan national living in Dover, Ohio, was arrested July 25 after he was found with the girl who had been missing for nearly two months.
Late last week, Agustin-Ailon was indicted on two counts each of rape and pandering, plus gross sexual imposition and interference with custody, according to a Tuscarawas County, Ohio, court spokesperson. His arraignment is scheduled for noon Friday and he remains in the Tuscarawas jail.
Investigators said the girl met Agustin-Ailon on Facebook and he drove from Ohio to Georgia to pick her up.
“She sought to leave home, and this person came and got her,” Hall County Sheriff Gerald Couch said at the time of the arrest.
The girl contacted her father online and asked him to stop searching for her, Couch previously said. Instead, he reported that information to investigators, who tracked down Agustin-Ailon.
Agustin-Ailon is expected to face additional charges in Georgia. For now, he will remain in Ohio, according to Lee Darragh, district attorney for the Northeastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia.
“After consultation with the Hall County Sheriff’s Office and the elected county prosecutor in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, we have determined it best to delay extradition to Hall County,” Darragh said in a statement earlier this month. “Based on the information we have at this time, the most serious criminal offenses in this case occurred in Ohio, and the bulk of necessary witnesses even to prove a Hall County case are in Ohio. It makes sense that the suspect answer to what charges Ohio proceeds on first.”
Couch said he agreed with the DA’s decision.
“My primary goal in this case is to see justice done. If that means we have to wait for this suspect to have his day in court in Ohio before he faces our charges, so be it,” Couch said. “I just want to make sure he has no chance of luring another young girl from home, wreaking havoc on another community like he did ours.”
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