Father of Missing Hawaii Woman Commits Suicide While Searching for Her in Los Angeles


The father of a Hawaii woman who went missing in Los Angeles earlier in November has been found dead of an apparent suicide at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) after traveling there to search for her.

Ryan Kobayashi, 58, was seen alive as recently as Friday after helping local authorities search for his daughter, 31-year-old Hannah Kobayashi, for 13 days, the Daily Mail reported.

The grief-stricken dad’s body was found Sunday at around 4:00 a.m. local time at the bottom of an LAX parking structure that he jumped from, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) confirmed to a local NBC affiliate. 

“The Kobayashi family endured a devastating tragedy today,” the family said in a statement obtained by the outlet. “After tirelessly searching throughout Los Angeles for 13 days, Hannah’s father, Ryan Kobayashi, tragically took his own life. This loss has compounded the family’s suffering immeasurably.”

“What the family needs most in this difficult time is for all communities to rally around them with support, compassion, and prayers. Please be considerate with your comments and posts. The trauma they are enduring is profound, and they now face the additional burden of grieving the loss of their family’s pillar and navigating next steps.”

The Kobayashi family filed a missing person report for Hannah, an aspiring photographer, on November 10 after she missed her connecting flight to meet relatives in New York City from her native Maui on November 8 and began sending cryptic text messages.

“Deep Hackers wiped my identity, stole all of my funds, & have had me on a mind f**k since Friday,” one of Hannah’s messages, obtained by the Daily Mail, read.

One of Hannah’s concerned friends reported that they received a text saying that she was “tricked.”

“I got tricked pretty much into giving away all my funds. For someone I thought I loved,” the alarming message stated.

She also sent texts to loved ones claiming to have had a “spiritual awakening.”

Hannah was reportedly on the same flight as her ex-boyfriend, with whom she had planned the trip prior to their break-up. 

Prior to his death, Ryan said the former couple did not speak or sit next to each other during the flight, and that the ex-boyfriend made the connecting flight and reached New York without Hannah. 

However, he said that his daughter’s ex was cooperating with the investigation. 

“A lot of worrying, a lot of confusion. Everything is just a blur it seems because I haven’t slept well since I’ve heard the news, and I really don’t know … it’s just really concerning,” the father told the Daily Mail. “We’re just trying to get us as much information as we can.”

“We will do everything we can until we have found her. We just need to get the word out there about her,” Ryan said. “She’s a wonderful person who brings joy to so many people.”

A timeline of Hannah’s last known moments before disappearing into the streets of Los Angeles compiled by the outlet revealed a mysterious series of leaving and returning to the airport after spending a “considerable” amount of time at The Grove shopping mall.

She was seen heading back to LAX, where she presumably spent the night. 

On November 11, three days after missing her connecting flight, Kobayashi was reportedly spotted boarding an LAX Metro C line at Aviation/Century Station at 9:02 p.m. local time before transferring to another train at the Rosa Parks station. 

Hannah then deboarded the train and was last seen exiting the Metro Pico Station about 16 miles from LAX with an unidentified person, whom the outlet referred to as a “mystery man,” at around 10:00 p.m.

Her final social media post, shared to Instagram on November 11, showed a pair of feet wearing Nike shoes with an eyeball emoji in the caption:

Internet sleuths have shared their theories in the comments, speculating about a “psychotic break,” a “cult,” and “drugs.”

According to Hannah’s mother and sister, Brandi Yee and Sydni Kobayashi, the concerning texts they received from Hannah’s phone “did not sound like her.”

They added that her phone’s last location before being turned off was at LAX. 

“Yeah, we share location,” Yee said, to which Sydni added, “And we know her phone’s off because it goes straight to voicemail. … None of the texts are getting delivered. We can’t locate her phone.”

Hannah’s aunt, Larie Pidgeon, told the Daily Mail that the family wants the LAPD to “take it a bit more seriously.”

“We think they realize we’re not going away and we’re going to be really loud. We’re going to do something until they do something,” she said.

In an interview with NewsNation, Pidgeon said her niece had “no reason” to be in downtown Los Angeles with an unknown person that late at night, “unless she was misled, unless she was forced to or, unfortunately, now we’re thinking, unless she was drugged”:

Several aspects of this story remain unclear, including why Hannah did not board her connecting flight, why she left and returned to the airport, the identity of the man she was spotted leaving the train station with, and if the messages sent from her phone were really from her.

It is also unclear if her father, Ryan, communicated to anyone prior to his suicide or if he discovered something else that prompted it. 





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