One Eatonton man has been arrested, and authorities are seeking another man, both of whom are accused of human trafficking and child molestation charges.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said the case began in June 2024 when his office received a phoned anonymous phone tip regarding a 14-year-old girl being forced to stay in a hot car all day, every day. The caller stated that the girl was from Maryland and was sitting in a Honda Accord in the employee parking lot of Noles Landscapes and Lake Oconee Tree Farm, located on Lake Oconee Parkway in Putnam County.
The caller was not only concerned about the reason the girl was with the male employee, but also about the girl’s health and well-being while staying cooped up in a car with no air conditioning, given the temperatures at the time were above 90 degrees, according to incident reports.
The sheriff and deputies went to the nursery and found the car and the girl. Sills emphasized that the Noles were nothing but cooperative, had helped the law enforcement officers a great deal, and were not at all involved in the suspected criminal activity.
The Noles also went out into the field and picked up the worker who had driven the Honda, later identified as Eulalio DeLeon-Aldana, and brought him to the officers.
DeLeon-Aldana gave his consent for the deputies to search his car. Amidst a lot of food, drinks, and trash, they found all of the girl’s personal belongings in the vehicle, including her clothing, various I.C.E. papers, and a school ID card from New Jersey, according to reports by PCSO’s Sgt. Justin Brock and deputies Paul Bernichon, Jason Cabe, and Janna Waddell.
Sills said the girl told him that Aldani was her father, and then another time she said he was her uncle. Meanwhile, Aldani told Sills that she was a friend of his daughter. She said she was staying in the car because she was trying to get a job at Noles, but wasn’t hired yet.
The tipster told Cabe that he learned from another worker that the girl was from Guatemala, and she and DeLeon-Aldana had been staying at an Eatonton hotel because DeLeon-Aldana’s girlfriend, with whom he had children, did not want the girl in her home and told him to leave.
During the investigation, officials spoke with the girlfriend, who reported that the girl was brought to Eatonton by a woman in mid-May, and DeLeon-Aldana had subsequently picked her up from the woman. He kept her outside in their yard through the night, according to the girlfriend, but she would not provide any other information about that night. The investigators also learned that the girl had stayed at DeLeon-Aldana’s girlfriend’s brother, Francis Sagastume-Garcia’s, house on occasion.
Other family members told the investigators that “family rumors” were that the girl had been brought to Eatonton to be one of DeLeon-Aldana’s “wives.”
The investigation revealed the girl, who eventually admitted her real name to DFCS workers and said she was 16 years old, had come to the U.S. by boat, and she was picked up by law enforcement and taken to immigration. Paperwork found in the car revealed that she had arrived near Hidalgo, Texas, on March 16, 2022, and was tested for COVID-19, received immunizations, and underwent a physical health breakdown.
A copy of an I.C.E. arrest warrant was also found in the car. Following her arrest, she was sent to New Jersey to live with acquaintances of her family, who may have been living near them in Guatemala. She was then moved to several different locations, and each time, the females of the household forced her to leave.
Sills said I.C.E. had originally flown the girl to Baltimore, and he had no idea how she had gotten from Baltimore to New Jersey. The New Jersey school officials informed Sills that the girl had left school in October 2023 and transferred to another state, but they had never received any request from the other state’s school system for her educational records. The school officials provided the phone number of the girl’s guardian she’d lived with while there. The guardian was believed to be from the same Guatemalan village as the girl, and she provided Putnam’s sheriff’s detectives with the girl’s mother’s phone number in Guatemala.
“We called and the mother said ‘we’re poor here, I don’t want her to come home,’” Sills said. “We told her she was cohabitating with a man 23 years older than her, and she said she didn’t care because they were poor there and she’d be better off here.”
Sills said currently the girl is presently in the custody of DFCS. When asked how she is doing, he said, “She turned out to be pregnant and has had a child since then.”
Back in June, DeLeon-Aldana was arrested on a bench warrant for failure to appear in court for a traffic violation issued by the Eatonton Police Department, and was released on bond. Sills said he immediately called and turned over the case to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit (HEAT).
The GBI agents notified him on Wednesday that they had warrants for the arrests of both DeLeon-Aldana and Sagastume-Garcia. When they went to serve the warrants and make the arrests, they could find neither man at their homes or places of employment.
However, a Georgia State Patrol Trooper pulled over Sagastume-Garcia for DUI and having no taillights on his vehicle, and in the process learned through NCIC that there was a warrant for his arrest, Sills said.
“It was fortunate that the trooper pulled him over,” Sills said. “I think that’s the work of the Lord; I actually believe things like that.”
Francis Alexander Sagastume-Garcia, 21, of the 300 block of North Maple Avenue, Eatonton, is being held without bond on charges of child molestation, felony trafficking a person for sexual servitude, driving under the influence of drugs/alcohol, and taillights required.
“So, if anyone knows the location of Mr. DeLeon-Aldana, let us know so we can put him in jail,” Sills said.
He said he is still waiting to hear from I.C.E. regarding the immigration status of both men.