LIHUE — Authorities in California aren’t divulging details around a murder case involving a Kauai man. Marcus Antonio Brown, 29, was supposed to board a return flight to Kauai in Mineta San Jose International Airport Sept. 5. Instead, he was
LIHUE — Authorities in California aren’t divulging details around a murder case involving a Kauai man.
Marcus Antonio Brown, 29, was supposed to board a return flight to Kauai in Mineta San Jose International Airport Sept. 5. Instead, he was found dead 28 miles north, on the back of an abandoned home in Hayward, Calif.
“We aren’t getting into full details of that right now,” Mark Ormsby, Homicide Unit supervisor at Hayward Police Department, said Wednesday about the ongoing investigation.
Ormsby said it wasn’t until Sept. 9 that the Hayward police discovered Brown’s identity.
“We contacted some people in Sacramento about somebody who might fit this description,” Ormsby said of the state of California’s Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit. “That’s how they sent us to San Jose, saying it sounds like a person missing from San Jose.”
Brown had been reported missing in San Jose after a Hawaii citizen called the police department there, Ormsby said.
Ormsby wouldn’t comment on why Brown’s body was found nearly 30 miles north of where he was supposed to be.
He said the department believes it knows what happened, but would not comment “on that part right now.”
The Garden Island reached out to a friend of Brown on Kauai, who allegedly reported him missing to San Jose police, but she has not responded.
Joseph Mataele, 22, and Sosaia Havili, 24, have been charged with Brown’s murder.
Originally from Virginia, Brown was a resident of Kauai since 2009.
