Update: Dec. 12, 9:53 p.m. Memorial service for Tran has been added.
Update: Dec. 7, 1:56 p.m. Police give more information on finding Tran.
An El Camino student who was missing for almost two weeks was found dead in his car in Hawthorne on Tuesday morning, Hawthorne PD said.
Jonney Tran, 20, was reported missing after not showing up to work on Thanksgiving night.
Detective Jerry Allison, Hawthorne PD, said they tried to give someone a traffic violation, when they found the body of a dead person in the car at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday morning.
“The body has not been identified yet,” Allison said. “We presume that it’s (Tran).”
He added that the body was so decayed that it was unidentifiable.
The case is still under investigation to see if it is a murder case or not.
The Union also made attempts to contact the family and Facebook page, but did not receive any comment by deadline.
Tran, who was a respiratory care major, had a job at 85C Bakery, where he met Savannah Abalos, 20, undecided major and girlfriend of over a year.
Abalos had hoped to find Tran as soon as possible and even created the Facebook page Help Find Jonney Tran, which is now “Jonney Tran Memorial Page.”
His memorial service will be this Saturday, Dec. 17 at 1 p.m. at Da Vinci High School located at 13500 Aviation Blvd., Hawthorne, CA 90250.
How others saw Jonney:
“He hates butterflies,” Abalos said remembering him. “Whenever he sees one he takes his hat off just in case he needs to protect himself (from the butterfly).”
Adrian Padua, Tran’s former coworker and former EC student, said that he remembers everyone liking Tran at work.
“He was a really funny guy,” Padua said. “(Always) kept all of us at work laughing on and off the job.”
Many others have been commenting on the page sending their condolences to the family and friends of Tran.
Others were contacted in hopes of finding out more about Tran.
“Well I wasn’t very close to him, but Jonney was a good guy,” Juan Jose Urquiaga Novoa, 21, film major, said. “Very funny, creative and a nice person overall.”
Tran being a nice and funny guy seemed to be a trend of how people saw him.
“He was very friendly and got along with everyone,” Patrick Le, 22, English and philosophy major, said. “He was a great friend and a great person.”
Tran even was even nice enough to teach a friend of his how to duel in “Yu-Gi-Oh!”
“He even gave me his old deck (and I still have it),” Cochise Edmondson, 21, business major at Santa Monica College, said. “I knew him (throughout) and hung out together for a while. We’d always make stickers and liked to go to the flea market down the street from El Camino.”
The owners of the Facebook page relayed a message to everyone who aided in finding Tran:
“It is with great sadness in our hearts that we have to report (Jonney) has been found deceased. Please keep his family and friends in your heart and prayers. Thank you all for helping to locate, (Jonney).”
