My son got in a fender bender and caved in the left part of the fender. Other than the plastic damage, it looked to be ok, did not appear to affect the metal bumper under the plastic (it ran on top of it.) At home, opened the hood to take a look and there appeared to be no issues. Tried to close the hood and it would not lock. The first locking part latches, but the hood will not lock into place.

At first I thought it was something damaged on the latch mechanism so I looked up all the stuff on Google and most all of them go to either a damaged cable or latch itself. I lubed everything up and all the mechanisms/springs move fine. I then manually (with the hood up) engaged the locking mechanism to see if maybe the piece locking it in place was not working, but it locked as it should. Released it and tried it again, it locked again. This tells me it is not the latch or the cable.

So my thought is - alignment. Maybe something shifted and the locking bar on the hood is not going to the right place to push down the mechanism and lock. But I can find nothing on checking this or how to adjust the hood or the latch, or figuring out if I have to go to the left or right, or up or down.

When I try to close the hood, I cannot push down any further and the hood stays up roughly 1/4 of an inch on both sides. So my thought is the

Any help or suggestion would be appreciated!
Thanks