Sudiksha Konanki's family now believes missing student drowned in Dominican Republic
As an international investigation for missing University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Konanki presses on, her family now believes that the 20-year-old drowned, officials said Tuesday.
Konanki vanished from Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, this month while on a spring break trip with friends. She was last seen on March 6, and the person believed to last see her alive told investigators she had struggled in the ocean before disappearing.
"Sudiksha’s family has expressed their belief that she drowned," Sheriff Michael Chapman, of Loudoun County, Virginia, where her family lives, said in a statement. "While a final decision to make such a declaration rests with authorities in the Dominican Republic, we will support the Konanki family in every way possible as we continue to review the evidence and information made available to us in the course of this investigation."
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. He asked them to consider possibilities other than drowning, including kidnapping.
Her family sent a letter to Dominican authorities asking that she be declared dead, Dominican Republic National Police spokesperson Diego Pesqueira said, according to a report from NBC News late Monday.
Authorities in the Dominican Republic did not immediately respond to inquiries Tuesday from Paste BN.
Konanki arrived in the country on March 3. In the early morning hours on March 6, surveillance footage shows Konanki drinking with a group in the lobby at the Riu Republica hotel, where she was staying. The footage showed her with a man identified as Joshua Riibe, a student at a Minnesota university she met while on the trip, while the rest of the group walked toward the beach.
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Riibe told investigators he and Konanki went into the ocean together and a large wave dragged them away from shore. According to a transcript of his interview with police obtained by U.S. and Dominican news outlets, Riibe said he carried Konanki back to shallower water and saw her walk knee-high in the direction she had left her clothes before he vomited and later passed out. He said he thought she had taken her clothes and left, but he did not see her again.
Riibe has been considered a person of interest, not a suspect, in Konanki's disappearance, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office. Officials seized his passport and have held him under surveillance at the hotel since Konanki vanished, according to news reports.
In the letter to Dominican police from Konanki's parents, which was also obtained by Fox News, they wrote that initiating the process of declaring her dead would not ease their grief but would "bring some closure and enable us to honor her memory."