(NewsNation) — It seemed as though 39-year-old Beau Mann had a lot to look forward to, which makes his November disappearance all the more puzzling to family and friends.
On June 11, Mann was supposed to marry his longtime partner Jason Abate, to whom he had proposed at a Beverly Hills hotel.
Wedding planning and celebration was on the horizon.
But neither came. Instead, there’s only sadness and questions among his friends and family since Mann went missing.
“We’re dealing with someone who’s just vanished, I mean, something has happened to him,” Abate said. “And I can assure you, he’s not voluntarily missing. I know Beau so well.”
Mann has been missing since Nov. 30, when he was last seen at a Los Angeles 7-Eleven buying things for his home, including ice.
Los Angeles police say a 911 emergency text was sent from Mann’s phone minutes after he left the store.
“We can confirm that there was a 911 text that was received at a 911 center dispatch call center and they did make an attempt to contact him to get more clarification on what that request was,” LAPD Officer Jill Calhoun said. “But there was no response.”
Abate said the ice is evidence something happened to Mann that was out of his control.
“You’re not going to bring a melting bag of ice into an Uber unless you’re going home, and that’s where he was scheduled to go.”
Police say an Uber dropped him off at the Ventura Boulevard store around 2 p.m. that day. Surveillance footage confirms he purchased a few items before walking off in a blue baseball cap.
He never made it back to his Brentwood apartment.
The text Mann sent to 911 did not include the word “help,” according to police.
Police know he was picked up by an Uber from the store. According to Uber, Mann’s trip ended that day with no incident report to the company; they directed further questions to law enforcement.
“Obviously, there’s certain things that I can’t share. What we do know is that he was picked up from the 7-Eleven. He requested an Uber ride from the 7-Eleven on Ventura, and then … according to the ride, he was dropped off in the area of Berkeley Street in Santa Monica,” Calhoun said.
One worry family and friends have is the possibility that sex trafficking had something to do with Mann’s disappearance.
There has been activity on Mann’s phone since his disappearance.
Mann is the founder and CEO of Sober Grid, a support network for recovering drug addicts. Mann himself was a recovering addict.
Abate believes Mann’s drug abuse stemmed from the struggles that come with being a young gay person. In starting Sober Grid, Abate said Mann was fulfilling a desire to help other people in similar situations.
His surrogate mother of 20 years, Sandy Eggers, served on the Sober Grid board and was the first person Mann told he was gay.
“It’s been draining, just draining. I go to bed thinking about Beau, I wake up thinking about Beau — all kinds of theories and possibilities that we’ve explored,“ Eggers said.
Police are hoping to obtain images from around the time Mann went missing or information on any possible sightings.
“If you could snap a photo of him from a distance and that way we can compare and see,” said LAPD detective Omar Franco. “A lot of times we do get mis-IDs and we don’t mind going out there to rule them out. But what helps out a lot is if we get a photograph or something that we can at least go off of.”
