A Maui woman missed her flight—then vanished. Police say she voluntarily crossed the Mexican border
It’s been more than three weeks since Hannah Kobayashi missed a connecting flight in Los Angeles.
The 30-year-old from Maui, Hawaii, first went missing on November 8 while traveling from Hawaii to New York City via LA for what she described as a “bucket list” trip.
Her family launched a desperate search to find her, flocking to LA, handing out flyers and keeping her story in the public eye.
Now, police have declared her a “voluntary missing person,” saying that she was captured on surveillance footage walking across the US’s southern border into Mexico.
Here’s everything we know:
Kobayashi, a photographer and aspiring DJ, departed her hometown of Maui, Hawaii, on November 8 to visit her aunt in New York City. She described the trip in her hand-written itinerary as “bucket list dreams become reality.”
She had initially planned the trip with her ex-boyfriend but they had since broken up. As the trip was already planned, the pair planned to travel on the same flight and go their separate ways once they landed at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York.
Kobayashi’s aunt, Geordan Montalvo, planned to go to a show with her niece in New York on the evening of November 12.
But the pair touched down at LAX for a 42-minute layover and, while her ex-boyfriend made it to the final destination, Kobayashi missed the connection.
The ex-boyfriend helped police with their inquiries to try to find Kobayashi.
A photo of Kobayashi appeared to show her getting off the flight at the Los Angeles airport on November 8.
The next day she was spotted at a Taschen bookstore at The Grove shopping center in the Fairfax area of LA. Her family said they do not know why.
A video posted on YouTube On Sunday November 10 showed Kobayashi at the LeBron XXII Trial Experience, an event held at the Nike store, also at The Grove. A photo of the event also appeared to have been posted on her Instagram account.
A day later on November 11, surveillance video around a downtown Los Angeles Metro train station near the Crypto.com arena showed her with an unknown person. Her family said she did “not appear to be in good condition” in the footage.
