Going on three years, and still no justice for Hania Aguilar

 

This past January, a “juvenile” the same age as Trayvon Martin when he was killed in what a jury found was a case of self-defense, shot and killed four members of his own family and a pregnant woman in Indianapolis. The Adams Street Massacre was the worst mass shooting in the city since the Hamilton Ave. Murders in 2006, when two “gangstas” entered the home of a Hispanic family of seven, killing execution style all present, including three children, because the killers assumed that there must be drugs and money inside the house, and Hispanics are all supposed to be drug dealers.  

In this latest mass shooting, in a typical middle class neighborhood, Raymond Ronald Childs III killed his father, his stepmother, a sister, a brother and his pregnant girlfriend; another brother managed to escape with his life after being shot. He told police that Childs had previously left the house without permission, and when he returned their father told him that he would be “punished” later, which apparently was what set-off Childs’ killing spree.

Certain crimes seem utterly senseless, and who knows what motivates someone to do them, save pure evil. Take for instance the case of Michael Ray McLellan; on November 5, 2018 he told friends that he was heading to the Rosewood Mobile Home Park in Lumberton, North Carolina for a “lick,” because Hispanics lived there and he assumed there would be drugs and money to be found. A “lick” is a slang term for robbery. He wore a dark “hoodie” and a yellow bandana to hide his face so that he would be mistaken for a “Latin King” gang member. What he ended up doing there was far more heinous.

Hania Noelia Aguilar was getting ready for school in the early morning dark. The Fayetteville Observer reported around that time a video camera recorded a man walking along N.C. 41 and enter the mobile home park. A woman who lived in the park saw the man, who she had never seen before; she attempted to scare him away by taking out her cellphone and pretending to call 911. Just before 7 AM, two residents heard noises outside their home and saw a man with his face covered appear to be attempting a break-in; when the man saw them, he fled. Then

One street over, on lot 39, a 13-year-old girl in a blue shirt with flowers and jeans was getting ready to go to Lumberton Junior High School. She stepped outside her family’s trailer to start her aunt’s Ford Expedition. She stood next to the green SUV, its engine running and waited.

It would be the biggest mistake of her life. But how could she know?

That’s when the man in dark clothes with a yellow bandana over his face appeared. He pushed the girl into the SUV and drove it way. The girl’s cousin (who heard her screaming) saw it happen. Someone at the house immediately called 911. Within a few hours an Amber Alert buzzed on cellphones and flashed on billboards for miles around.

But by then it was already too late. Hania Aguilar had already been raped and murdered, her nude body to be found 22 days later hidden underneath a folding table and a tire in a pool of water 75 yards off a road eight miles from her home. McLellan had gone into the motor home park to find someone to rob, but he did something much worse: he robbed a young girl of her life for a cup of coins and satisfying his contempt for Hispanics.

Police assumed at first that this was a kidnapping with the intent of demanding ransom, and although they continued publicly speculating that she was still alive, this should have been deemed unlikely when the SUV was discovered three days later hidden among some trees and Hania’s clothes found scattered inside of it.

McLellan appeared three hours after the kidnapping at an acquaintance’s home a mile away from the murder site; he was still wearing the yellow bandana. His clothes were soaking wet, and he asked to wash his clothes there. He also tried to sell two video monitors, which were discovered to have been ripped out of the SUV when it was found. Shortly after McLellan arrived the Amber Alert sounded on the acquaintance’s cellphone; McLellan had turned off his phone to avoid possible tracking. Based on this information and video surveillance, cellphone tracking, other witness accounts and DNA evidence, McLellan was the main suspect within days, and despite his efforts to remain hidden from police, a phone call to his girlfriend was used to locate and arrest him on November 12.

Although police and the FBI who joined in the case were certain that McLellan was the perpetrator within days, his identity was withheld from the public, in the hope of finding Hania alive, and to gather more evidence. When he was arrested, it was on an arrest warrant issued for suspicion of robbery the previous month. McLellan denied any knowledge about Hania’s abduction, but his DNA was found on the steering wheel of the Expedition, as well as his semen in the undergarments. 

And it should never have happened. McLellan should have been in jail weeks before the kidnapping and murder—and probably much further than that. It was soon revealed that there was evidence about another sexual assault that occurred in 2016 that McLellan likely committed but was not charged with. Two Robeson County Sheriff’s deputies ignored evidence from a rape kit from that case  that had been sent to the North Carolina Crime Lab, and had found a match with McLellan’s DNA. The deputies who “accidentally” came across this evidence while searching a federal crime database ignored it and refused to follow-up on the case. The exposure of this “oversight” led to the firing of one of the deputies, and the resignation of the other in 2019.

McLellan, in fact, had a rather lengthy career in crime. The Charlotte Observer provided a rundown of his various run-ins with the law:

November 6, 2000:  “At 16, McLellan was placed on post-release supervision after he was convicted of assaulting a child, a misdemeanor.”

June 7, 2004: “McLellan was again placed on post-release supervision (meaning probation) after he was convicted of assaulting a child.” He was 20 at the time.

January 11, 2007: “McLellan was sentenced to serve up to 12 years and nine months in prison after he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and first-degree burglary. The conviction stemmed from a New Year’s Eve home invasion in which McLellan reportedly wore a ski mask and burst into a 22-year-old woman’s home, shooting and injuring her.”

After nine years in prison, McLellan was released on probation. It didn’t take long for him to get his “act” together:

October 2016: “A man, identified two years later by police as McLellan, removed an air conditioner, crawled through a window and sexually assaulted a woman at knifepoint.”

October 2017: “The Robeson County district attorney’s office and the sheriff’ office were notified by the state crime lab that DNA from the 2016 rape kit matched McLellan. The sheriff’s office did not pursue the case further.”

February 8, 2018: “McLellan was sentenced to serve up to 20 months in prison after he was convicted of felony breaking and entering and larceny of a motor vehicle.”

June 6, 2018: “McLellan was released from prison after four months. He was placed on post-supervision release, which was scheduled to end in March 2019.”

October 16, 2018: “Fairmont police issued a warrant for McLellan’s arrest. Investigators say McLellan got into a woman’s car the day before, pointed a gun and demanded money and the car. The woman recognized his voice, so he removed his ski mask and left with $1 of her money, police say.”

October 17, 2018: The state’s Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission issued a second warrant for McLellan’s arrest, noting he had violated the terms of his recent release from prison.”

However, local police didn’t seem to be in any hurry to apprehend McLellan, who supposedly was employed at the Perdue Farms plant in Lumberton. Despite two arrest warrants against him, he seemed to carry on as if nothing was wrong, literally presenting himself out in the open where everyone could see him while continuing to plot new crimes, even telling people he knew about what he was up to. And then:

November 5, 2018: “Thirteen-year-old Hania Aquilar was abducted from outside her family’s home in Lumberton, leading to an exhaustive search led by the FBI.”

On December 8, McLellan, already in prison for the robbery, was charged, according to a local ABC News affiliate, with “first-degree murder, first-degree forcible rape, statutory rape of a person under 15 years of age or younger, first-degree sexual offense, statutory sex offense with a person 15 years or younger, first-degree kidnapping, felony larceny, felony restraint, abduction of child and concealment of a death.” The case was the subject of some notoriety nationally only because the Trump administration inhumanly refused to allow Hania’s father, who was living in Guatemala, a visitor’s visa to attend her funeral—allegedly because he didn’t have sufficient “ties” in the country.

Still, it has been twenty-seven months since McLellan’s arrest, the case has yet to go to trial, and in fact no trial date has been set. The reason given is because of a lengthy backlog of crimes that haven’t been cleared yet. McLellan is currently being held without bond, and although his attorneys have filed motions arguing for his right to a “speedy” trial, there doesn’t seem to be any rush, and North Carolina has a “generous” definition of what counts as “speedy.” Perhaps prosecutors are in no “hurry” because the evidence against McLellan is seemingly airtight, and his defense attorneys don’t question that he is guilty of the crime, but there are “mitigating” circumstances.

What has occurred was a court appearance in June, 2019 where the district attorney stated that the death penalty would be sought. There was another “obligatory” court appearance in June, 2020; the previous April there had been “confusion” created when text message alerts were sent out suggesting that McLellan was scheduled to be released from prison, but this was quickly “corrected,” explained by McLellan being removed from the state prison registry for completing a prison term for his previous offenses, but he would remain in prison for “safe keeping.” Neither the district attorney’s office, nor defense attorneys, have been responding to requests in regard to the current state of the case.

What “defense” can McLellan possibly have for his unspeakable crime? His defense attorneys have asked for past social services and mental health records, and the woman claiming to be he is godmother stated that he was raised in a “bad situation,” but also suggested that he was a “happy child” who nevertheless had “anger issues” and “hung with bad kids.” Like his mother’s aunt who was interviewed by the Fayette Observer, she just didn’t know what was “in his head,” but was glad he was off the streets before he could hurt anyone else; maybe that would “help” him.

Unlike residents of Lumberton who expressed grief about the crime, in Fairmont, McLellan's “hometown,” those who knew him refused to talk unless they were “paid.” None expressed any sympathy for the victim, and a few seemed off-put because the crime was making them look “bad” for being in any way associated with McLellan.