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The mysterious stranger who was spotted on surveillance video with a A woman from Hawaii who disappeared shortly after arrival Los Angeles was declared a suspect in her disappearance by the police, who, after questioning the unidentified man twice, said he had done nothing wrong.
“Given the amount of time they spent together, he was pretty good to listen to,” Detective Omar Franco of the LAPD’s Missing Persons Unit said People magazine. “She just went on and on about her life in Maui, her personal life, her love life and so on. And he just listened to her.”
November 11 Hannah Kobayashi30, she was flying from Hawaii to LA, where she was supposed to catch a connecting flight to New York. But she never made it to the plane, and neither did her distraught family he hasn’t seen or heard from her since. While police were searching, Kobayashi was seen with an unknown man around town, whom police have identified as a person of interest. She was last seen Nov. 12 walking in Tijuana across a crosswalk after taking a bus from LA to the border, authorities said. But while Kobayashi’s sister and mother continue to search for her, seemingly convinced she was the victim of a hoax, investigators insist she went missing voluntarily.
The man last seen with Kobayashi has not been publicly named.
In an interview with police, the man said he met Kobayashi near the LAX train station around 9 p.m. and agreed to help her find Union Station, a downtown transportation hub, LAPD Lt. Doug Oldfield said People.
“We have this gentleman, we have them walking [on video]Oldfield told the magazine. “We’re looking for — Hey, does this person look like they’re in trouble, what does they look like? We see a lot of smiles. We see the guy smiling.”
Another video shows Kobayashi and a man walking past a pair of police officers, which would supposedly give her “a chance to maybe say, ‘Help, help,’ if something’s wrong,” Oldfield said. “So from here we can get a better idea of to who this guy was and we identified him.”
The man said he thought Kobayashi was a “free spirit” and seemed coherent and calm. She told him she wanted to “see the redwoods” and mentioned her plan to be in New York, he told police. When they arrived at Union Station, the man and Kobayashi had dinner, talked for several hours and fell asleep in the waiting room, according to officers. In the morning, Kobayashi woke up and left alone, buying a bus ticket at 6:10 a.m. to the border. The drive to the border took about four hours, and Kobayashi moved to Mexico around noon, Franco said, adding that Kobayashi left her phone at LAX for reasons yet to be determined.
Investigators are eager to complete the puzzle and find out what Kobayashi’s “endgame or goal” was, Franco says.
Because, as Oldfield said People“We don’t have her side of the story.”