He was one of 3,781 people reported missing last year in Los Angeles. Many were found or reappeared when they were ready. Others, suffering from mental illness or addiction, slipped away from family and joined the growing ranks of homeless people living on city streets.Hernández’s mother knew in her gut something wasn’t right when her son didn’t return from his job at a marijuana dispensary. She did the only things she could: She called the police and she started looking.
Her phone rang that evening. The caller identified himself as “E,” the owner of the dispensary. He told Hernández the security cameras at the shop provided only a live feed, so there was no recording that might offer some clues of what happened. He also said he didn’t want the police to get involved.
The detectives were confident the ransom demands were coming from opportunists who had nothing to do with the disappearance. Still, they worried that Hernández’s son had been the victim of foul play. They were troubled by the fact that someone had tried to remotely access his account on a stock-trading app three days after he disappeared.
One person said a young man who looked like him was at 7th and Hill streets, talking to himself. Another caller said he might have been at 4th and San Pedro. Hernández and other family members checked out every tip, sometimes getting up in the middle of the night to head to skid row.“It was heartbreaking to come home every time shattered, empty-handed, without my son,” she said.The weeks slid by. Her son’s 22nd birthday came and went.
“We’d been trying to talk to Ethan about this boy,” she said, adding that Astaphan and Peng moved to California about two years ago. Peng could not be reached for comment.A judge gave the detectives permission to install a tracking device on Astaphan’s rented Ford truck in the middle of the night, and in early October, officers from the LAPD’s secretive Special Investigation Section began tailing him.
Seeing it, Peoples realized he had heard something the night Hernández went missing. The police described his account of that night in a search warrant affidavit.
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A heart-breaking tale of a mother’s love & courage and of hope in despair.