(CNN) The kidnapping and killing of 13-year-old Hania Aguilar may have been prevented if authorities had properly handled DNA evidence from a separate case last year, a North Carolina prosecutor said.

Robeson County District Attorney Luther Johnson Britt told reporters on Wednesday that authorities had evidence linking suspect Michael Ray McLellan to a rape case for at least a year but they took no action.

"This hurts," Britt said. "This is like taking a punch to the gut and not being prepared to get it."

The county's sheriff and district attorney offices were notified in October 2017 that DNA recovered from a 2016 rape kit possibly matched McLellan. The kit had been compared to more than 17 million profiles taken from convicted offenders, detainees and arrestees in the national law enforcement database system known as CODIS.

But nobody followed up on it and authorities only discovered the issue last week, Britt said.

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