A North Carolina man who tried to escape from police custody twice will spend the rest of his life behind bars for killing a 13-year-old girl.
A Robeson County judge handed Michael McLellan, 40, a life term in prison without the possibility of parole for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of 13-year-old Hania Aguilar. McLellan initially faced the death penalty after being charged with first-degree murder, first-degree rape, first-degree forced sex offense, statutory rape of a child, statutory sex offense with a child, first-degree kidnapping, felonious restraint, abduction of a child, concealing the death of a child and larceny of a motor vehicle. However, six years after the fatal incident, he pleaded guilty to murder instead to avoid the death penalty.
According to the Independent, on Nov. 5, 2018, Aguilar had been sitting in the driveway of her Rosewood Mobile Home Park in Lumberton while waiting to go to school when McLellan abducted the teenager in her family’s SUV. 22 days later, authorities found her partially decomposed naked body weighted down in a swamp a few miles from her home.
An autopsy report showed Aguilar had been sexually assaulted before her demise. McLellan, who was already in police custody for an unrelated case from 2016, was arrested a few days later. However, authorities discovered the investigator in the previous rape case already connected the defendant’s DNA to the crime before Aguilar was kidnapped, which means her death could have been avoided. Soon the investigator was fired.
Furthermore, on the day the defendant pleaded guilty, McLellan had attempted to escape police custody after the defendant unsuccessfully tried to use a makeshift handcuff key to unlock his handcuffs on the way to court after it got stuck. On the way back from court along Interstate 40, McLellan managed to hit a deputy’s gun holster, thereby releasing the gun. As a result, the deputy driving slammed on the brakes with enough time to hold on to the barrel of the gun, while a second deputy sprayed the defendant’s face with pepper spray before he released the weapon.
"I was in the courtroom when he pleaded guilty and gave a little statement to the family and everything, but now, I see all of that was just for show. He had an escape plan in his mind the entire time," said Robeson County Sheriff Burnis Wilkins, reported ABC 11.
McLellan also pleaded guilty to the 2016 rape and will serve his life sentence at Central Prison in Raleigh.
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