Sudiksha Konanki vanished from a beach while on Spring Break in a popular Dominican Republic resort, now new footage shows her in the same bar as “person of interest”
Newly emerged footage shows missing student and the person of interest in her case at a bar just before she disappeared.
Sudiksha Konanki, 20, was celebrating Spring Break in the buzzing resort town of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic earlier this month when she vanished without a trace.
New footage shows the premed student in a bar on March 6 with “person of interest” former Iowa high school wrestling champ Joshua Riibe, 22. He is seen in the background of the footage with two other men standing behind him. In the new footage, the pair do not interact and appear to be in separate groups.
Riibe and Konanki were last spotted together on the beach before she vanished. In a chilling statement, Riibe told NBC “The ocean is a dangerous place.”
Riibe has not been accused of wrongdoing or charged with a crime, but his passport has been pulled so he cannot leave the country.
While local authorities initially said they believed the student drowned in the ocean during rough surf in the early morning after taking a dip with Riibe, they have not ruled out foul play.
In a second video, Konanki is seen in a group of four girls relaxing in the lobby of the RIU Hotel & Resort in the hours leading up to her disappearance.
The Loudoun County Sheriff said: “We have limited information about the circumstances under which she went missing and no updates at this time.”
University of Pittsburgh spokesperson Jared Stonesifer said: “University officials are in contact with Sudiksha Konanki’s family as well as authorities in Loudoun County, Virginia, and we have offered our full support in their efforts to find her and bring her home safely.”
Sudiksha’s father, Subbarayudu Konanki, revealed to CNN that his daughter had travelled to Punta Cana for spring break before starting her pre-med studies at Pittsburgh.
He described his daughter as a “a very nice girl. She’s ambitious. She wanted to pursue a career in medicine.”
According to him, she told her friends on Wednesday that she was going to a party at the resort.
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. After that, her friends came back after some time but Sudiksha did not show up. When her friends couldn’t locate her the next morning, they alerted the police.
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