Police say the car held Comas’ blood, a missing passenger seat and a trail that led them to her boyfriend.
PHOENIX, Ariz. — The clearest public record in the disappearance of 21-year-old Isabella Comas is the condition of the red Hyundai Sonata she drove away in Jan. 11, a vehicle police later found damaged, stained with her blood and missing its front passenger seat.
That car has become the backbone of the case because investigators say it ties together the final known movements of Comas, the digital trail from her phone and the actions of Tommy Rodriguez, the boyfriend now identified as a person of interest. While Comas remains missing, prosecutors have moved ahead only on vehicle-related counts, leaving the physical evidence inside the Hyundai as the central fact driving the public investigation.
The story of the case can be told through where the car went. Comas was last seen leaving a friend’s residence in Avondale at about 3 p.m. on Jan. 11 in the red 2011 Sonata. By the next day, her cellphone had surfaced at a Phoenix recycling center, and investigators said data from the Life360 app showed the phone moving between Avondale, Rodriguez’s Phoenix home and an industrial area in El Mirage. The Hyundai did not stay put. License plate readers and surveillance footage later showed Rodriguez driving it in the Globe area and again in Phoenix, according to police and court records cited by local outlets. Eventually the car was dumped near 67th Avenue and Indian School Road. To investigators, that route was not random movement around the Valley. It was the framework of a possible crime scene that stretched across several cities.
What officers found inside the Hyundai intensified the case. Court documents described red stains that were consistent with blood, and later police spokesman Jaret Redfearn said testing confirmed it was Comas’ blood. He also said the front passenger seat had been removed. Those details mattered because they suggested more than a simple stolen-car case. Redfearn said detectives believe Comas suffered a life-threatening injury that may not have been survivable without treatment. Police have not publicly released crime scene photos, lab timelines or a more detailed explanation of where the blood was found inside the vehicle. They also have not said whether the seat was removed before or after the car was abandoned. But the public description alone made the Hyundai less a missing car than a rolling evidence file.
The next layer of the investigation focused on who was seen using that evidence file. Rodriguez, 39, was identified by police as a recent romantic partner of Comas. Authorities said they spoke with him and later named him a person of interest on Jan. 15. They also arrested him that day on charges of theft of means of transportation and criminal damage tied to the Hyundai. Local reporting said Rodriguez admitted arguing with Comas shortly before she disappeared, though officers said his statements contained inconsistencies. The same reporting also said he later returned from a trip to California before his arrest. None of those facts answers where Comas is, but each one added weight to police claims that Rodriguez remained closely linked to the car after she vanished.
Then the public record widened. TV stations reviewing court files reported Rodriguez had an earlier murder conviction and had served prison time. More recent records showed a 2020 stalking conviction and a later probation violation. In those filings, an ex-girlfriend told police Rodriguez threatened her with weapons and said he would cut her husband into pieces if he could not have her. Those allegations are separate from the Comas investigation, and they do not amount to proof in this case. Still, they have become part of the context that prosecutors and reporters have used to explain why the car evidence has drawn so much alarm.
Outside the court record, Comas’ family has spoken in stark terms about the case. Her mother publicly accused Rodriguez of knowing where her daughter is, reflecting how little certainty the family has been given since January. Police, meanwhile, have said they checked hospitals, emergency services and other obvious leads with no success. Arizona’s Department of Public Safety issued a Turquoise Alert on Jan. 13, identifying Comas as 5 feet 3 inches tall, about 110 pounds, with brown eyes and pink hair. That alert broadened the search, but it did not close the gap between the evidence in the Hyundai and the unanswered question of what happened to the woman who owned it.
The case now stands in two places at once: an abandoned Hyundai that investigators say tells a violent story, and an open disappearance investigation still missing its final, most important fact. Court action on the car-related charges remains the next visible step.
Author note: Last updated April 20, 2026.