A person of interest has been named in the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of 20-year-old Sudiksha Konanki, a pre-med student at the University of Pittsburgh who went missing while vacationing with friends in the Dominican Republic.
Joshua Riibe, who was seen with Konanki before her disappearance, is being considered a person of interest in the missing person’s case, according to a spokesperson for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office who spoke with WPXI News.
Konanki traveled with five female friends to Punta Cana and stayed at the Riu República Resort. On March 5, the group went for a walk on the beach with some guys they had met at the resort. Most of the group returned to the hotel for the night, Blavity and the New York Post reported.
Surveillance footage shows Konanki walking with a man, believed to be Riibe, a tourist from Iowa, after 4 a.m. on March 6. Law enforcement said they went for a swim, and a large wave reportedly caught the young woman, according to Blavity ABC News.
Konanki’s father speaks out
“She went to the beach on March 6 early morning around 4 a.m. with friends and some other guys they met at the resort,” Konanki’s father, Subbarayudu Konanki, told CNN. “After that, her friends came back after some time and my daughter did not come back, did not show up from the beach.”
While local police believe Konanki died by drowning, her family filed a criminal complaint to investigate other potential reasons for her disappearance, including kidnapping.
Meanwhile, detectives questioned Riibe regarding his whereabouts with Konanki, and he gave them three different stories about what happened that night, per WPXI News.
Riibe gives investigators three different versions of what happened that night
When a surveillance photo captured him walking back from the beach, Riibe told investigators that he returned to the shore after getting sick.
In the second version, he said he felt sick and left Konanki standing in knee-deep water.
A third version of his story stated that he fell asleep, and the last thing he remembered was Konanki walking on the beach.
Konanki and her friends were supposed to return home because classes were going to resume. Her friends, family and law enforcement have not stopped searching for her on the island.