PULLMAN, Wash – The man who found Aaron Aung and his two-year-old daughter, Seraya Aung, in Mexico spoke exclusively to NonStop Local’s John Webb on Wednesday.
The FBI corroborated that Martin Ceballos was the man who reported the missing girl to Mexican authorities.
Aung was recently arrested by Mexican Police and turned over to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Aung, who’s from Moscow, ID, was wanted by Pullman Police for not returning the two-year-old to her mother for custody exchange.
He fled to Mexico with Seraya and his reported fiancé Nadia Cole. Cole has since returned home.
Seraya’s return to home is all thanks to Ceballos, who noticed something out of the ordinary, and did something about it.
“There was something that just told me ‘you know you have to do something because of the little girl.’ That’s what was more in my mind – the baby,” Ceballos said. “So when I saw this and things started tickling me, telling me that I had to do something, that’s when I reacted.”
Ceballos says last Wednesday Aung parked near his house in Nogales, Mexico.
Here is a photo from a doorbell camera of Aung and Seraya.
“I saw him getting off the car with baby Seraya,” Ceballos recalled.
Ceballos said Wednesday that he asked Aung where he was from.
“He said, mumbling and then it took him for awhile to answer me and he said from Washington,” Ceballos said.
Ceballos said Aung asked where he could find political asylum. That raised a red flag, according to Ceballos.
“So I said what the hell. My mind kept rolling,” Ceballos said.
Ceballos called his daughter, who lives in Tucson, AZ, with a description of his car. She looked into it and found the missing child poster.
“So we went all the way downtown to one of the main stations of the police and he said ‘okay, let’s go. We’re going to arrest him right now,’” Ceballos recalled.
Aung was then arrested by Mexican Police. He was deported back the U.S., where he’s now sitting in the Santa Cruz County Detention Center in Arizona.
“I felt very good. I feel relieved. I’m just happy that I did something for somebody,” Ceballos said.
Aung is awaiting his extradition. Once he’s back in Whitman County, he’ll face a judge for his first court appearance.
Pullman Police said he’ll be facing a custodial interference charge, which carries a maximum of five years in prison.
