New details emerged about the way in which police in Douglas County, Colorado, recently identified and recovered 14-year-old Abdul Aziz Khan, who was kidnapped several years ago by his noncustodial mother.
Police were responding to a Feb. 23 call about an alleged home burglary when they discovered two children in a vehicle parked in the driveway, later identifying one of them as Khan.
Kyle Crone, the owner of the unoccupied property, said in an interview with KUSA-TV in Denver that he had received an alert on his cell phone informing him that someone was at the front door.
“For whatever reason, maybe by the grace of God, I happen to look at my camera this time,” Crone recounted.
Rabia Khalid, the mother of the boy, and her husband, Elliot Blake Bourgeois, exited the home while deputies were there.
The couple claimed that they were associated with the realtor.
But Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly said that “as the deputies began to investigate further, they began to uncover inconsistencies in the suspects’ story.”
Their work “led them to a shocking discovery that one of the suspects, Rabia Khalid, was actually a fugitive wanted for kidnapping.”
They shortly determined that one of the children was the missing child.
Douglas County Sheriff’s Deputies on Trespassing Call Uncover High-Profile Kidnapping Case, Rescue Boy Missing for Seven Years
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Kenner (Louisiana) Police Department, and the National Center for Missing &… pic.twitter.com/2eEJCnsjzJ
— DC Sheriff (@dcsheriff) March 5, 2025
Police put both minors into protective custody.
The case was previously featured in the Netflix show “Unsolved Mysteries,” and the U.S. Marshals Service had searched 11 states for the missing child.
“It’s always interesting how it’s always the smallest thing that can, you know, completely change the outcome or the lives of someone, and I’m just glad that they’re safe,” Crone said of the situation.
Weekly said that Khalid and the boy’s father were in the middle of a divorce when the father was granted full custody.
Khalid allegedly fled with her son in November 2017 after her ex-husband won the custody battle.
She had made claims against the father, but the case was tossed.
Weekly said that he got to meet with the boy’s family.
“They explained the story to me about how this all started. They had a tough time actually getting law enforcement to be responsive, because this, on the front end, it appeared to be a custody dispute,” Weekly revealed, noting that the Marshals only got involved in 2020.
An official union has not yet occurred between the boy and his father.
“It is a slow process. Again, this father has not had contact; he told me for like a total of nine years he has not seen Aziz, so this is the only life that Aziz has known and so it’s gonna, it is gonna take some time,” Weekly continued.
“So, it’s baby steps to get up to that point. And there’s just a lot of work to be done for this reunification. It’s not a simple process.”
Police did not reveal how the other child was related to the situation.
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