Authorities in the hometown of missing University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Konanki do not believe that Joshua Riibe, the last person seen with her, was complicit in her disappearance. However, US investigators continue to urge Dominican authorities to complete their probe.
Konanki, 20, was last seen on March 6 in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, where she had been vacationing with friends for spring break. Riibe, 22, told authorities that he had been with her on the beach, sharing a kiss while swimming in the ocean before he drunkenly passed out and lost track of her.
Despite Dominican authorities designating Riibe as a “person of interest” and seizing his passport, detectives from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s office in Virginia, where Konanki’s family resides, do not suspect him of wrongdoing.
“Is he in any way complicit in any of this? And even if he’s not complicit in any way, and we don’t believe he is, we’ve interviewed him, and he was very cooperative,” Loudoun County sheriff’s office spokesman Thomas Julia told The Post.
Julia acknowledged Riibe’s struggle with memory from that night due to his own reported near-drowning experience, which may have left gaps in his recollection. “When you’re in a particular state of mind after going through a near-drowning yourself, you may indeed have passed out,” he said.
Investigators are still working to determine how much time elapsed between when Riibe last saw Konanki and when he lost consciousness. “Was it a moment? Was it seconds? That correspondingly bears on whether she had a chance to get out and then somehow disappeared without his knowledge,” Julia noted.
Although Virginia authorities do not suspect Riibe’s involvement, they are advocating for the Dominican investigation to be fully completed. “Anything that’s outstanding in terms of surveillance, phones, any other evidence that has been collected and hasn’t been analyzed, we would like all that completed,” Julia said.
Konanki’s parents have also requested that authorities stop investigating Riibe, saying that he has been cooperating and that no evidence of foul play has been found. Their plea came as they also asked officials to declare their daughter dead, despite her body never being recovered.
“There’s no reason not to complete the investigation so there’s no lingering ‘Oh, what about that phone? Oh, what about that piece of videotape?'” Julia emphasised.
Dominican authorities originally suspected that Konanki had drowned but later indicated they were not ruling out foul play, particularly after her family raised concerns about possible abduction. Surveillance footage captured Konanki and Riibe together before her disappearance, but no definitive conclusions have been drawn.
For now, while Riibe remains under police guard in the Dominican Republic, officials on both sides continue to seek answers about what truly happened that night on the Punta Cana shore.
