Kidnapped child Abdul Aziz Khan and the mother who took him on the run for seven years had been living in an apartment in Aurora, Colorado for a still-undetermined period of time before astute deputies arrested her last week in a nearby suburb, Douglas County Sheriff Darren M Weekly told DailyMail.com.

The boy’s father, Dr Abdul Khan, has traveled to Colorado after learning the joyous news that the son his ex-wife abducted in 2017 from Georgia had been found safe and well, the sheriff added on Wednesday.

‘There’s just an immense sense of pride that we were able to bring this seven-year-long mystery to a close and to start the process of reunification with Aziz and his dad, though that is going to be a process – they’re not together; that’s going to be slow,’ Sheriff Weekly said.

The boy’s mother, 40-year-old Rabia Khalid, was arrested on February 23 along with her husband, Elliot Blake Bourgeois, 42. They are being held in Douglas County awaiting court dates later this month.

Two Douglas County deputies had responded to the scene of a possible burglary at a house for sale in Highlands Ranch when the homeowner, who’d been remotely monitoring the three-bedroom, three-bathroom property, noticed suspicious activity and called authorities.

‘As they pulled up on scene, they found a vehicle in the driveway,’ the sheriff said on Wednesday of the deputies, one a trainee and one with a few years on the force. ‘There were two kids in the driveway. They made contact with the kids and asked them what was going on.

‘One of the kids, that was later identified as Aziz, said … that his parents were with the realtor, or something like that. The kid called inside to mom with a cell phone, and the two adults came out.’

As deputies began asking questions, they ‘felt like they were being lied to – that these people were not being straight with them, not only about why they were there but who they were,’ the sheriff said.

Abdul Aziz Khan is pictured with his father, Dr Abdul Kahn, before the boy’s 2017 abduction, when he was kidnapped from Georgia by his non-custodial mother, Rabia Khalid

Khalid, 40, was arrested in Colorado on February 23 by Douglas County deputies responding to a call about a possible robbery from a homeowner who was remotely monitoring the house they’ve listed for sale in Highlands Ranch

Douglas County deputies also arrested Elliot Blake Bourgeois, 42, on charges including kidnapping, forgery, identity theft, providing false information to authorities and trespassing

‘The female, later identified to be Rabia, said that she never had an identification card or anything like that. Obviously, for an adult living in this country, that’s very unusual – so very suspicious,’ he said.

Using a portable device called a morphs scanner to check fingerprints, the deputies ‘found out that she had a warrant for her arrest for kidnapping … they were subsequently arrested for kidnapping, fraud and then just a myriad of other charges – fraud, identity theft, providing false information to authorities and trespassing, as well.’

Weekly said a neighbor ‘was kind enough to allow us to bring the kids into their home with a deputy sheriff, just so the kids weren’t scared … we actually had a deputy watching Blues Clues with these kids.

He said it was ‘probably a very scary situation for those kids, but we did the best we could to minimize that.’

He said the age of the second child was being withheld.

A Highlands Ranch next-door neighbor told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that he’d observed the February 23 arrests on the neat cul-de-sac and noticed that one kid was ‘tall.

‘He looked about my height,’ the 27-year-old neighbor, Ken, told DailyMail.com, declining to give his last name.

The other child, he said, looked like ‘a baby, I think – a little kid.’

Aziz, he said, ‘grew up in an atmosphere that he was in when we found him. He was healthy and everything like that. There were no concerns there. But this is all he’s known for the last seven years.

‘And he’s 14 years old now, so … the reunification process is going to take some more time.’

The boy’s father, Dr Khan, had discussed his son’s kidnapping on an episode of Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries titled ‘Abducted by a Parent’

Abdul Aziz was just seven years old at the time of his disappearance with his mother. Now 14, he was discovered by deputies along with another child, whose name and age are not yet being released by authorities

He said detectives had executed search warrants on the Aurora apartment ‘as well as the car that we recovered at the scene.

‘They’re still trying to figure out, based upon the documents that were there … and the fraudulent ID … there’s a lot that they’re working through to figure out exactly where they’ve been, who they’ve been with.’

He said he still didn’t know why the suspects were at the Highlands Ranch home.

‘They didn’t need a place to live, because they were living in Aurora,’ he said.

After seven years – and with the case featured on Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries – the sheriff said he was surprised they hadn’t been apprehended beforehand.

‘I just wonder how many people that these folks have been in contact with over the last seven years and the officers just kind of took them at their word and just moved on,’ he said. ‘Our deputies … dug into it. They were following their gut instincts, and they realized something was not right’

He said the Douglas County district attorney intended to prosecute the pair in Colorado ‘on our charges’.

Khalid is next due in court on March 21 in Douglas County.

The boy’s family released the following statement through the sheriff’s office: ‘We’re overwhelmed with joy that Aziz has finally been found. We want to thank everyone for their support over the last seven years. We specifically want to recognize the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office for their exceptional work in solving this case. Now, as we navigate the next steps, we ask for privacy so that we can move forward as a family and heal together.’