As an international search continued Friday for a
University of Pittsburgh student who vanished while on a spring break trip to the Dominican Republican earlier this month, the last person believed to see her told authorities there he tried to save her from waves and thought she had taken her things and left afterward, according to news reports. Sudiksha Konanki, 20, was last seen on March 6 with a group of friends heading to a beach in
Punta Cana . She is believed to have stayed behind with Joshua Riibe, a student at a Minnesota university and
Rock Rapids, Iowa, native she met while on the trip, officials said. Riibe was
named as a person of interest this week by the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office in Virginia, where Konanki is from. He is not considered a suspect. Riibe told authorities that he and Konanki had talked and kissed, and were in the ocean together when a large wave hit them and pulled them out farther into the ocean, news outlets including
ABC News and the Dominican publications
El Nacional and
Noticias SIN reported, according to a transcript they obtained of his interview with police. "When we surfaced, we tried to plead for help, but there was no one there," Riibe said, according to ABC News. Riibe said he had worked as a lifeguard at a pool before. He said he "held her under my arm and swam to get her out of the water," ABC News reported. "I was trying to make sure that she could breathe the entire time – that prevented me from breathing the entire time and I took in a lot of water," he said. “When I finally touched the sand, I put her in front of me. Then she got up to go get her stuff since the ocean had moved us," Riibe said. "She was not out of the water since it was up to her knee. She was walking at an angle in the water." He said he asked if she was OK but didn't hear a response because he began vomiting the water he swallowed. "After I saw her walking away, while she was walking in the water, I never saw her again," he said, according to ABC. Riibe said he passed out on a chair. Interpol, or the International Criminal Police Organization, issued a yellow notice advisory in Konanki's disappearance on Thursday. Authorities from the Dominican Republic, the FBI, U.S. Department of State and other federal and local agencies in the U.S. are all coordinating to investigate.
How did Sudiksha Konanki go missing?
Konanki and five of her friends arrived in Punta Cana on March 3, authorities said. Surveillance video from the early morning hours of March 6 show Konanki with a group drinking in the lobby at the Riu Republica hotel, where she was staying. At about 4:15 a.m., the footage showed the group walking to the beach, and Konanki stayed behind with a man, police said. He was later identified as
Riibe . A man reportedly gave police different details in his account of what might have happened. CNN reported that the man told local police he and Konanki went into the ocean but that he felt sick and got out of the water before falling asleep on a lawn chair. He said Konanki may have been swept away by waves or left at some point after. He also said he saw her walking in water up to her knees in the direction of where she left her clothes,
CNN reported according to sources close to the investigation. “Her friends came back after some time and my daughter did not come back, did not show up from the beach,” Konanki’s father told CNN.
Be safe on your trip: Sign up for USA TODAY's Travel newsletter. What's the status of the investigation?
Officials have deployed drones, helicopters, divers, boats, canine units and human teams in the search for Konanki. The Dominican Republic Public Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday said they were "exploring all possible options, accidental and intentional" for the investigation. According to the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, the investigation is not criminal, so Riibe is not considered a suspect but is a person of interest. Konanki’s father, Subbarayudu Konanki, had urged authorities to expand the search beyond the water after her body wasn't found in an initial search of the ocean. He asked them to consider options other than drowning, including kidnapping.
Who is Sudiksha Konanki?
Konanki, originally from India, lives in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Loudoun County, Virginia. She attends the University of Pittsburgh and graduated from the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2022, according to her LinkedIn profile. Missing person posters describe Konanki as 5 feet 3 inches tall with black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a brown bikini, big round earrings, a metal designer anklet on her right leg, yellow and steel bracelets on her right wrist and a multicolored beaded bracelet on her left wrist, according to the posters.
