Investigators say blood inside the abandoned Hyundai matched 21-year-old Isabella Comas, who has been missing since Jan. 11.

AVONDALE, Ariz. — A missing-person investigation in metro Phoenix has focused on the boyfriend of a 21-year-old woman after police said he was tracked driving her car hours after she vanished and later left it abandoned with a large amount of her blood inside.

Authorities say Isabella Comas has not been seen since Jan. 11, when she left a friend’s residence in Avondale in her red 2011 Hyundai Sonata. The case matters now because investigators say the evidence inside the vehicle points to a life-threatening injury, while the only publicly identified person of interest, Tommy Rodriguez, faces charges tied to the car but not to Comas’ disappearance itself.

Police have laid out a timeline that begins around 3 p.m. on Jan. 11, when Comas was last seen leaving the area of 11120 W. Van Buren St. in Avondale. She was expected to pick up a friend for work and did not do so, and she also failed to show up for work the next day, according to state alert information and local reporting. Investigators later said Comas had been in a recent romantic relationship with Rodriguez, 39. By Jan. 12, her cellphone had turned up at a recycling center in Phoenix. Police said digital evidence then helped map the movement of the phone and car from Avondale to Rodriguez’s Phoenix residence, then to an industrial area in El Mirage, before the Hyundai was later seen in Globe and Phoenix. Surveillance footage and license plate reader data, Avondale police said, placed Rodriguez behind the wheel after Comas disappeared.

The vehicle became the center of the case once it was found abandoned in Phoenix near 67th Avenue and Indian School Road. Court records cited by local TV stations described red stains inside that were consistent with blood. Avondale police spokesman Jaret Redfearn later said the blood was confirmed to be Comas’ and that the passenger seat was missing. In a statement that sharply raised the stakes of the investigation, Redfearn said detectives believe Comas suffered a life-threatening injury that may have been unsurvivable if left untreated. Investigators have not publicly said where that injury happened, whether any weapon was recovered or when Comas was last known to be alive. They also have not publicly explained how her phone ended up at the recycling center. Rodriguez, according to police accounts, admitted he and Comas argued before she vanished, but officers said parts of his account did not line up.

As the search widened, more attention fell on Rodriguez’s criminal history. Court records reviewed by local outlets show he previously served prison time after a second-degree murder case and later pleaded guilty in a 2020 stalking case. Newly reported records from that later case said Rodriguez threatened an ex-girlfriend and told her he would cut her husband into pieces if he could not be with her. A probation report described his stalking behavior as part of a troubling pattern, according to ABC15. That history has not resulted in any homicide-related charge in Comas’ case, but it has shaped the public scrutiny around the investigation and sharpened questions about what investigators may still be building behind the scenes.

Rodriguez was arrested Jan. 15 on charges tied to the Hyundai, including theft of means of transportation and criminal damage. He has pleaded not guilty. Early in the case, reporting said he was being held on a secured bond, and later coverage said he was released March 9 under electronic monitoring after posting bond. The legal track has remained narrower than the broader disappearance investigation. Prosecutors have argued in hearings that Rodriguez had already gone to significant lengths to conceal evidence linked to the car, while police have continued to describe him as a person of interest rather than announce charges in Comas’ disappearance. That split has left the family pressing for answers as the criminal case over the car moves forward on a faster timetable than the search for Comas herself.

Comas’ family has made emotional public appeals during the search. Her mother told local television that Rodriguez knows where her daughter is, a remark that captured the family’s anger and the vacuum of information that has surrounded the case since January. Police have said surrounding agencies, hospitals, emergency services and other leads were checked without finding Comas. The woman described in the Turquoise Alert was 5 feet 3 inches tall, about 110 pounds, with brown eyes and pink hair, last seen wearing a baggy navy-blue shirt, blue pants with a white stripe and possibly sandals. What remains unresolved is the most important question in the case: where Comas is, and whether the evidence police have collected will support more serious charges.

Comas remains missing, Rodriguez remains the named person of interest, and the next public milestone is continued court action in the vehicle-related case while the disappearance investigation stays active.

Author note: Last updated April 20, 2026.