menu Home
Local News

Multiple agencies pursuing cases against Dover man who took Georgia girl

| July 29, 2024

Antonio Agustin

NEW PHILADELPHIA (WJER) (July 29, 2024) – The Dover man arrested last week for taking a 12-year-old girl from Georgia will remain in the Tuscarawas County Jail as officials sort out the charges and which jurisdictions will handle them.

Tuscarawas County Sheriff Orvis Campbell last week said 34-year-old Antonio Agustin could eventually be charged with kidnapping and sex crimes after driving to Gainesville, Ga., in May and bringing the 12-year-old back to Ohio to be his girlfriend.

They were spotted together at the Dover Pool this past Thursday, and authorities arrested Agustin and safely recovered the girl a short while later.

Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Captain Adam Fischer says he is working on a report for the county prosecutor here while officials in Hall County in Georgia are working on a report there.

Agustin presently is being held on a felony charge of interfering with custody from Georgia. Fisher says it will be a complicated process, but Agustin will have a court hearing in Tuscarawas County before he is sent to Georgia.

In addition, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would like to talk to Agustin, who is a Guatemalan native, as is the girl. Fisher says he did not know Agustin’s citizenship status.

He says many steps remain before authorities determine where Agustin would go on trial or serve a prison sentence or how any deportation order would play into it.

Campbell Friday said the girls was riding back to Georgia with four law enforcement officers who came to Dover to work on the case. He said she would be reunited with her father.

Case raises issue of

The case has sparked discussions on several topics – from internet safety to immigration enforcement to cultural norms.

Both Agustin and the girl are from Guatemala. Tuscarawas County Sheriff Orvis Campbell says the girl in this case is very young, but he sees too many men dating girls in the local Guatemalan community.

“Some in the culture support relationships with very young girls. It’s not uncommon, and it needs to become very uncommon because it is very illegal,” Campbell said. Agustin “could end up in prison for virtually the rest of his life.”

Fisher praised the efforts of investigators to find the girl, who connected with Agustin online and disappeared in May. He says they followed around 500 leads since then.

“Georgia investigators have traveled the Florida, to South Carolina, to Texas following these leads, and then obviously ultimately here to Ohio,” he said.

“The coordination should not go unnoticed. The cooperation among law enforcement agencies even if they are across state lines should not go unnoticed, and it should speak volumes to how dedicated law enforcement professionals are to cases like this as well as others.”

 

Written by