Hawaii native Hannah Kobayashi wanted to disconnect from her life and voluntarily disappeared, police determined this week, pointing to surveillance footage of her buying a bus ticket from Los Angeles to the Mexico border after she missed a flight to New York.
A still of the footage obtained by Fox 11 shows Kobayashi, 30, at Los Angeles Union Station purchasing the ticket with her passport and luggage in tow the day before she left the country.
At a news conference on Monday, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell told reporters his department believes Kobayashi crossed into Mexico on November 12 at San Ysidro. He cited footage of Kobayashi walking into Mexico obtained from US Customs and Border Protection. His department has now declared the woman a “voluntary missing person.”
“We’ve basically done everything we can do at this point,” he said. “She’s left the country and is in another nation now.”
Police are no longer investigating the crime but Kobayashi’s case will remain open until law enforcement can confirm her safety.
The search for Kobayashi began last month after she missed a connecting flight to New York City at Los Angeles International Airport on November 8. She later went to The Grove and was spotted in Downtown Los Angeles with a man unfamiliar to her relatives, who flew from Hawaii to California to search for her.
The man was cooperative during a police interview, officials said.
Chief McDonell now believes the woman missed her flight intentionally. Kobayashi had asked airport officials to return her luggage, which had been sent to New York, back to Los Angeles. She later went to the airport to pick it up, he said.
McDonell’s department has not found evidence suggesting she was being trafficked or involved in criminal activity.
At the same time, Kobayashi sent cryptic texts to a friend saying she had been “tricked pretty much into giving away all my funds” to “someone I thought I loved.” Her sister, Sydni Kobayashi, described the texts as “really weird.” Kobayashi added that she was scared and couldn’t come back home.
As the search continued, Hannah Kobayashi’s father, Ryan, was found deceased after he reportedly died by suicide.
“She has a right to her privacy,” McDonnell told reporters. “We respect her choices, but we also understand the concern her loved ones feel for her. A simple message could reassure those who care about her.”
He asked anyone considering taking similar actions to consider “the people you’re leaving behind, your loved ones who are going to be worried sick about you.”
Sydni Kobayashi told Hawaii News Now her family learned about her sister crossing into Mexico on Monday. She called on police to release the border crossing footage.
“For them to tell us that they have been keeping us informed throughout the entire time, that’s absolutely inaccurate,” Sydni Kobayashi told the outlet. “We feel like we’re left in the dark and that was kind of like a huge slap in the face for us.” As the police suspend their investigation, her family has hired a private investigator to search for her sister.
Still, the family announced they would be shutting down a Facebook group called “Help Us Find Hannah,” the Associated Press reported after her relatives received “threats against their lives and the lives of their small children.”
Mexican authorities told the outlet they’ve been alerted to the case but have not received an official request to search for Hannah Kobayashi.
