Los Angeles police say missing Hawaii woman purposely skipped flight, family skeptical

The family of missing Hawaii woman Hannah Kobayashi is pushing back at the Los Angeles Police Department’s assessment that the 30-year-old purposely ditched her connecting flight to New York when she vanished last month.

“On Friday November 8th, 23-year-old Hannah Kobayashi missed her connecting flight from LAX to New York, which the investigation determined was intentional,” LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said in a Nov. 26 update — getting Kobayashi’s age wrong, her family later pointed out.

McDonnell added detectives had been “diligently reviewing video surveillance and employing various investigative techniques to locate Hannah” since taking on the probe Nov. 15. He noted her family was continuing to search as well, and emphasized authorities “remain fully committed to locating Hannah.”

Hannah Kobayashi had been due to land at New York City’s JFK to visit family and explore the city, but never arrived. Video surveillance showed her leaving the airport, and a string of disjointed texts to friends and family members raised an alarm.

Her mother and sister issued a statement Saturday through the RAD Movement, a nonprofit assisting them in the search, insisting Hannah would never cut off contact like that, and taking issue with factual inaccuracies in the police statement.

“It is completely out of character for Hannah to simply disappear without a trace,” her mother and sister wrote in a statement on Facebook. “We remain deeply concerned about Hannah’s safety, her well-being and her current state of mind.”

They’d been blindsided by some of the revelations in the update, the pair said, and expressed concern over what they felt was a lack of transparency. According to the mother and daughter, the biggest tell was that Hannah would never have remained silent after learning about the suicide death of her father, Ryan Kobayashi, in Los Angeles last week.

“The lack of communication surrounding some important details has left us feeling excluded from potentially crucial developments,” the mother and daughter said. “However, we do remain hopeful and optimistic that the Los Angeles Police Department is doing everything in their power to assist us in locating Hannah.”

With News Wire Services