Missing 12-year-old girl found in another state with 34-year-old man she met online after she told dad to stop looking for her

Saturday, August 3, 2024 - The search for a missing 12-year-old Georgia girl has ended after she was found 10 hours away in Ohio with a 34-year-old man she met online.

Police say she was discovered after allegedly telling her father to stop looking for her because she wasn’t coming home.

According to multiple news outlets, 12-year-old Maria Gomez-Perez, of Gainesville, Georgia, was last seen on May 29 in the driveway of her home and found two months later on July 25 in Ohio with a man named Antonio Agustin-Ailon, of Guatemala.

At a press conference on July 26, police said Agustin was 31 years old, but in an earlier statement, they said he was 34, which matches Ohio jail records.

During a press briefing, Hall County Sheriff Gerald Couch said that the Georgia girl was found “safe and OK” in another state after having been missing for nearly two months. Sheriff Couch reported that Gomez-Perez was communicating with Agustin online prior to her disappearance.

He said that authorities believe the child had been communicating with the man on Facebook and via other online apps.

Sheriff Couch said, “Maria had indicated that she was unhappy and she wanted to leave home.”

He further said that she had been communicating with other “adult males” online and gave them the same information.

He said, “Let me be very clear on this – Maria is the victim here. Remember she is only 12 years old.”

At the time of the press conference, police did not reveal any of the charges against the man, but they did say that he is expected to face several felony charges in Georgia and Ohio being that he transported a child across state lines.

During the investigation, it was revealed that Agustin allegedly drove from his home in Ohio to pick up the child from Gainesville, GA on May 29.

Police have reason to believe that Agustin had the child with him at his home the entire time that she was missing.

Law enforcement officials caught a break in the child’s missing case when she allegedly messaged her father Andres Gomez, who last saw her at home on May 29, on Facebook and asked him to stop looking for her. Sheriff Couch said that the child was using a new Facebook account that she created to solely message him.

While speaking with her dad, the child told him that she was doing alright and would not be coming home.

The father proceeded to alert the authorities, who were then able to track down the child by tracing the IP address to a Dover, Ohio location, where they found the 34-year-old man with the 12-year-old girl at a local swimming pool.

Upon their discovery, the Hall County Sheriff’s Department, along with the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office, arrested Agustin in a shopping center parking lot and safely rescued the child.