LOS ANGELES — Hannah Kobayashi, a Hawaiian woman who has been missing for weeks, walked freely into Mexico just after noon on Nov. 12, the Los Angeles Police Department said on Monday.
The department said the case has been recategorized as a "voluntary missing persons" one and has been closed. Detectives said they believe she wanted to disappear.
The update comes after weeks of claims from family and friends that Kobayashi had been kidnapped and was in danger after she disappeared before boarding her connecting at Los Angeles International Airport in early November. She was heading from Hawaii to New York.
Kobayashi, 30, used her passport to buy a train ticket from L.A.'s Union Station to the San Ysidro point of entry, and from there walked into Mexico alone and with her luggage, police said.
Despite claims to the contrary from family, the LAPD said their evidence appeared to show that Kobayashi voluntarily did not board her flight to New York, that she had her airline give her bags to her in L.A. and that she roamed around L.A. before voluntarily heading to Mexico.
She also expressed a desire to disconnect from modern technology before she went off grid, police said on Monday. Detectives traveled to the border to look at surveillance video, which they said showed the woman crossing the border.
Kobayashi's father, Ryan Kobayashi, died last month at a parking garage near LAX, after traveling to California from Hawaii to search for his daughter, according to the L.A. County Medical Examiner's office.
LAPD authorities asked that Kobayashi contact her family from Mexico to let them she is OK. The department said it would try to contact Kobayashi if Customs and Border Protection alert the force that the Hawaiian native has reentered the United States.
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